December 22, 2020
San Mateo County (SMC) Health has been allotted an initial 5,850 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and expects to receive five or six times that amount of Pfizer and Moderna combined doses by the end of the month. The vaccine doses have been or will be distributed to hospitals in San Mateo County, which will administer to them their staffs.
Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, Sequoia Hospital, Kaiser in Redwood City, and Kaiser in South San Francisco will receive their distribution of one box (975 doses) directly from the State of California in the next few days. The one-box allotments for San Mateo Medical Center and Seton Medical Center arrived this week at San Mateo Medical Center. Seton’s box has been transferred to Seton in Daly City. Each facility will manage its vaccination operation.
The health care partners that receive the initial doses will decide whether to disseminate all of their limited first allotments or to hold some in reserve for the second doses that need to follow within 21 or 28 days.
Future allocations of vaccine, starting with the next batch (Moderna), will go directly to multi-county entities like Kaiser, Sutter, and Dignity from the California Department of Public Health.
Local Walgreens and CVS pharmacies will work directly with long-term care facilities to administer vaccines, which are expected to begin at the end of the month. SMC Health has worked to ensure that all local congregate care facilities have signed up for the program. They will monitor their progress and provide support if needed.
SMC Health will vaccinate medical first responders (paramedics and EMTs), about 1,200, and will support the vaccination of staff at congregate care facilities if needed. When organizations cannot vaccinate their staff or residents directly, a SMC partner will do so.
They estimate 24,000 of the total 38,000 health care workers (this includes direct clinical care, those who handle cleaning, etc.) in San Mateo County will receive their first (of two) doses of vaccine from these initial shipments. Future shipments are already in process and will provide the second doses for these critical groups.
San Mateo Medical Center expects to begin vaccinating front-line staff as soon as Friday. The first vaccinations will be used to work out the logistics so that the operation can ramp up next week to begin vaccinating more front-line staff.
Following distribution to healthcare workers and long-term care facilities, the vaccine will be distributed in phases to people at high risk for severe COVID-19 illness due to underlying medical conditions, people 65 years and older, and workers in essential and critical industries. Distribution phasing is still being determined and subject to change.
