San Diego County received nearly 100,000 more coronavirus vaccines this week than it did the week prior, public health officials said.
The uptick in the vaccine supply, reported Wednesday, is good news for the county, where Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher said there hasn't been any waning in interest among residents to get inoculated.
The 294,440 vaccine doses the county received this week are the most, with 2,583,595 total vaccines received since they were cleared for use by the FDA in December.
Fletcher said he was not aware of how many doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines San Diego County is scheduled to receive next week. He said the county is continuing to store 11,000 Johnson & Johnson doses while federal health officials investigate reports of a handful of women across the country developing potentially dangerous blood clots within two weeks of receiving the one-dose vaccine, resulting in one death. Use of the J&J vaccine has been paused since April 13.
A total of 203 fully vaccinated San Diego County residents have tested positive for the SARS CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, according to Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county Health and Human Services Agency's Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch. This represents a rate of .027% of all fully vaccinated county residents — a little more than three times higher than the federally reported rate of .008%.
Of those, he said, 57% had no symptoms whatsoever and were tested for another reason. None of the fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized or have died.
"We expected to see higher rates locally," McDonald said.
More than 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to San Diego County, and 1,316,462 county residents have received at least one dose.
The state's goal is to vaccinate 75% of people 16 and older to achieve so-called herd immunity — equating to around 2.02 million San Diego County residents.
On Wednesday, the county reported that more than 846,000 people in San Diego County — around 42% of that goal — are fully vaccinated. The numbers include both county residents and those who only work in the region.
Officials reported 263 new COVID-19 infections and seven additional deaths Wednesday, increasing the total number of infections to 275,633 and the death toll to 3,681.
Of the 16,947 test results reported Wednesday, 2% returned positive. The 14-day rolling average of positive tests is 1.7%, Fletcher said.
Hospitalizations related to coronavirus decreased by 16, to 168, compared to Tuesday. There were 56 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit beds as of Wednesday, a decrease of five from the previous day.
Over the past 30 days, hospitalizations from the virus have decreased by 22% and Fletcher described the situation as "stable."
San Diego County is in the orange tier — the second-least-restrictive level in the state's four-tier system for reopening the economy.
