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Gearing up for making more COVID-19 vaccines available to its members, Palo Alto Medical Foundation has signed an agreement to set up a mass vaccination site at the San Mateo County Event Center, the county’s health chief said on Tuesday.
The larger site would enable PAMF to begin vaccinating a greater number of its patients — with the caveat as long as it has supplies, Louise Rogers, chief of health for San Mateo County, said during an update to the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Jan. 26.
A Sutter/PAMF spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the medical provider is “actively working to expand capacity throughout Sutter’s footprint and large-scale vaccine clinics are an important part of our strategy to continue to deploy as much vaccine as possible to eligible patients.”
The vaccination clinic at the San Mateo Event Center is expected to open to Sutter patients age 75 and older next week. It is a walk-up format, not drive-thru and will be by appointment only. Sutter patients, which includes patients of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, who are 75 years or older can make an appointment by calling a dedicated hotline at (844) 987-6115 or self-booking through My Health Online, the Sutter Health patient portal. Appointment availability remains dependent on vaccine supply, the spokeswoman said.
Sutter has approximately 3 million patients in its system throughout the Northern California region. It has been experiencing a patient surge in its acute facilities and is testing thousands of patients per day for COVID-19, it said in a separate statement.
“At this time, Sutter is prioritizing the state’s most vulnerable populations including those who are 75-plus years of age and our community health care workers because they are at greatest risk according to CDC guidance. As vaccine supply and appointment capacity expands, we will broaden eligibility and notify our patients. We share in the excitement and hope that comes with the COVID-19 vaccine and are working extremely hard to meet eligible patients’ scheduling requests,” the spokeswoman said.
On Tuesday, Santa Clara County opened vaccinations to people 65 years and older. Sutter could not immediately be reached regarding whether it would also open its vaccinations to that age group.
Rogers said the county has 49 positive COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people and an overall positivity rate of 5.7%, with a rate of 10% in the least healthy places census tracts.
The county is likely to remain in the state’s most restrictive “purple” tier until the case rate drops below 7 per 100,000 and if it remains below 8% for the positivity rate, she said.
Dr. Anand Chabra, county section chief for COVID-19, said San Mateo County has vaccinated 48,826 people, a total of 6% of the county’s population (a number that includes children, who are not eligible for the vaccines). The county has been allocated 58,750 doses thus far. The number of vaccinations given is likely higher, since the county doesn’t have data on all of the vaccinations given at long-term care facilities, where there are an estimated 12,000 residents. Those doses are administered by pharmacy teams from CVS and Walgreens.
About 30,000 of the county’s 38,000 health care workers have been vaccinated, Chabra said. The county has also vaccinated 16,000 people who are ages 65 and older, which is about 12% of the population, he said.
Rogers acknowledged there are some groups who should be vaccinated that currently fall through the cracks. Some small, informal group care facilities aren’t in the county’s licensing database and need to have access to the vaccines. The county is also working on a plan to reach homebound seniors, who might need to have public health nurses visit them at home. The county also has transportation for its Health Plan of San Mateo patients to be transported to vaccination centers, she said.
To further address equity issues, the county is looking at working with local pharmacies and to find local partners to administer vaccines at neighborhood sites where it is easy for people to walk to and receive the vaccine. Sub-zero freezers, which are required to store the vaccines, however, pose a challenge to this localized approach, Rogers said.
The main concern is still supply. Counties and medical providers don’t know when they will receive vaccines, nor the amount they will receive, in a timely manner, which doesn’t allow for planning, Rogers said, but she is hopeful that the logistics and communication will improve under the Biden administration.
Some issues could also arise in terms of supplies beyond the vaccine dose. Kaiser has expressed concern about having enough needles, for example.
“Everyone is constrained except for Sutter/PAMF for supplies,” Rogers said.
Some supplies, such as needles, come with the vaccines, but there have been five-dose vials from Pfizer that actually have six doses-worth of vaccine in them, Chabra said.
The county also added a new data dashboard related to the vaccines Tuesday morning on its website here.
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The “dashboard” you linked to is just a single powerpoint slide. Perhaps you meant to link to
https://www.smchealth.org/data-dashboard/vaccination-demographic-data
@awatkins Thanks for pointing out the problem with the dashboard link. It’s now fixed.
I am interested to know whether the San Mateo County statistics pick up someone like me who lives in Menlo Park but as a patient of Stanford Hospital was vaccinated on the Stanford Campus in Santa Clara County. Also, does the data reflect completion of second dose of is it just based on first dose?
Thanks,