A guy in my office is fond of saying that perfection is the enemy of the good. While nobody was expecting perfection from the expansion of vaccine availability throughout the county and the country, they also seem to have whiffed it on the good.
At least initially, anyway.
I last wrote about vaccine distribution in this column on Jan. 29, about the Salinas Valley ag community wanting a mass vaccination program for farmworkers. Based on a report from UC San Francisco, the deadliest jobs in the past pandemic year were to be found among food and agriculture workers. Combined with a UC Berkeley study that found 13 percent of 1,000 farmworkers surveyed tested positive for Covid-19, compared to a 3-percent positive rate for the general population, the statistics paint a grim picture of what’s to come as Salinas growers prepare for the growing season – and an influx of thousands of seasonal workers.
Since then, the national pharmacy chain CVS announced it would begin offering federally sourced vaccines in Monterey County – but only on the Peninsula, despite the fact that CVS has stores in Soledad and Salinas. In Soledad zip codes 93960 and 93955, the case rates for Covid infections in January were 81.2 and 73.1 (per 100,000 population), respectively. The case rates in two area codes in Salinas – 93905 and 93906 – were 101.7 and 84.1, respectively.
In the two cities where CVS chose to launch its vaccine rollout? The case rate in Monterey was 26.7 and in Carmel, 13.5.
In announcing its rollout, CVS trumpeted its status “as an ideal partner for administering vaccines in a safe, convenient and familiar manner” and that it was “particularly true for underserved communities, which have been a focus for us throughout the pandemic.”
The outcry was swift and loud. The Monterey County Board of Supervisors sent a letter on Feb. 3 to CVS CEO Karen Lynch pointing out that other locations – like Salinas and Soledad – often have multigenerational housing situations that put people at greater risk for infection.
By Feb. 5, CVS announced it would add a pharmacy in Salinas to the distribution list. Its digital scheduling portal is expected to go live on Feb. 11. Therein lies another problem: Those most in need of vaccines might not have access to computers, the internet or the know-how to navigate a digital scheduling portal.
Then on Feb. 9, the county Health Department announced plans to expand its vaccine rollout to include people between the ages of 65 and 74 who work in food, agriculture, childcare, education or emergency services, and those between the ages of 65 and 74 who live in 12 zip codes identified as the hardest hit in Monterey County.
All of which is great news, but… there’s always a but, isn’t there? The but in this case is a lack of vaccine supply, which can’t be controlled by anyone at this point except the state and federal government and pharma companies manufacturing them. (With the county’s current supply rate of 3,200 a week coming from the state, County Health Officer Ed Moreno estimated it would take 62 weeks to get through just that next tier.)
Moreno pointed out that communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19. In Monterey County, the Asian-Pacific Islander community is only 6 percent of the population, but accounts for 9 percent of the deaths from Covid. Latinos make up 61 percent of the population and a little more than 61 percent of the fatalities, but represent 77 percent of hospitalizations.
Just as they dispatched a letter to CVS, the Board of Supervisors dispatched one to Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for more vaccines. If the expanded rollout Moreno announced Feb. 9 is going to succeed, 3,200 vaccines a week isn’t going to cut it.
“The numbers don’t lie,” says Supervisor Chris Lopez, who represents South County. “My concern remains the lack of vaccines. We’re 1 percent of the state’s population and we’re getting 0.56 percent of the vaccines. I want to make sure we’re getting our fair share and right now I can’t say confidently that we are.
“Without assistance from the state, we can’t meet the need [in the farmworker community],” Lopez adds. “We keep repeating that these folks are essential and yet we’re not backing that up with the resource of the vaccine.”
