California revamps plan for delivering and tracking COVID-19 vaccine after backlash
California is reworking its vaccination distribution strategy for delivering and tracking vaccines in an answer to the many roll-out delays.
News Channel 3’s Dani Romero explains why this is happening.
California health officials on Tuesday laid out how they plan to change the state’s COVID-19 vaccine eligibility framework and work to more quickly inoculate residents of the most populous state in the U.S.
"We are building a statewide vaccine administration network," said Yolanda Richardson, secretary of the government operations agency. "We are thinking about tapping into the expertise of a third party administrator to make vaccine distribution more efficient.”
With this plan state health officials hope it will give California more control over who gets the COVID-19 shots.
The third party help will allocate vaccines directly to providers.
"Its going to include public health systems, pharmacies, public hospitals, community clinics, pop-ups and mobile sites,"said Richardson.
It's still unclear who the third party will be.
“As soon as we have more information on the third party administrator we'll make an announcement who that will be and what the scope of the work will be," said Richardson.
This comes as the state moves to re-arrange the order of when people are scheduled to get the coronavirus vaccine, instead of a model based on occupation. It will now be based on age.
“We really want to focus on eligibility requirements so that people across the state understand when it's their turn," said Richardson.
Under the new plan, the state will still prioritize healthcare workers, first responders, seniors over 65, food and agriculture workers and school staff
But other essential workers will have to wait.
“Younger individuals who are in professions or in situations were they aren’t nearly as exposed as some of the other higher exposed industries will end up waiting a little longer than others who have high risk or high exposures," said Dr. Ghaly, California Public Health secretary.
We reached out to the county they say that Riverside County will follow state guidelines in its vaccine response and will continue to do so.
California health officials on Tuesday laid out how they plan to change the state’s COVID-19 vaccine eligibility framework and work to more quickly inoculate residents of the most populous state in the U.S.
During a news conference with Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's top health official, Richardson said that the "overarching approach to operations is we want to make sure that nothing slows down the administration of vaccine other than the pace in which vaccine arrives in the state.”
Watch Dr. Ghaly's announcement in the player below:
Vaccine Priorities
Governor Newsom said California's pace for administering COVID-19 vaccines has tripled in the last three weeks from 43,459 to 131,620, and officials hope to vaccinate one million more people in the next ten days.
Dr. Ghaly said the state was going to begin prioritizing first responders, food and agriculture workers and teachers and school staff after all health care workers and California 65 and older were vaccinated.
He added that after these groups were administered their vaccines, California would move to an age-based eligibility list, abandoning the state's complex system of phases and tiers for vaccine distribution. Dr. Ghaly is expected to provide more details during a news conference at noon on Tuesday.
On Monday, California health officials lifted the regional stay-at-home order for all areas statewide. Health officials said they project that in the next four-weeks, ICU capacity in the three regions was expected to reach above 15%.
Projections made public
California’s health department released to the public previously secret projections for future hospital intensive care unit capacity throughout the state, the key metric for lifting the coronavirus stay-at-home order. However, state officials did not explain Monday how regional per capita virus cases and transmission rates that also were released might influence how much ICU space will be available in four weeks. Last week, state health officials told The Associated Press they were keeping all the data secret because it is complicated and might mislead the public. Coronavirus experts and open government advocates criticized the move, saying the public has the right to know what’s behind decisions that impact their lives.
MORE: California reveals data used to lift stay-at-home order
