As of Friday morning, San Diego County had administered at least the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine to just over 40% of the eligible population, and the county is just shy of having 25% of residents fully immunized.
Now, one of the big issues is the gap between supply and demand, according to Sharp HealthCare COO Brett McClain.
Curious how the vaccine rollout is going in San Diego County? KPBS is tracking the progress.
“It looks like this week is going to be a little bit lower, unfortunately, for a couple of reasons, but then it actually will probably go up in the next few weeks. But we are receiving and administering anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000, probably at the high, on a weekly basis,” he said.
Sharp HealthCare has five public vaccination sites across the county, including the superstation in Chula Vista. While they haven’t had to close down many of their sites due to vaccine shortages, they also haven’t been able to expand their capacity.
But McClain is optimistic that Sharp HealthCare is well on their way to their goal: to vaccinate upwards of one million San Diegans by the end of the pandemic.
“Today we will likely pass 400,000 total doses that we have administered and that is about 160,000 fully vaccinated,” he said on Friday.
California’s allocations of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are expected to remain relatively steady in the near future, but a recent mix-up with a batch of Johnson & Johnson is causing a nearly 90% reduction of those vaccines in the state next week.
The week after, California expects to receive an even smaller allotment of the single-dose shots.
“It looks like there is going to be somewhat less of an allocation for the whole state, and then San Diego ends up getting a percentage of that,” McClain said. “Some of those numbers are affected by the recent Johnson & Johnson issues, but that doesn’t affect our centers as much.”
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McClain added that vaccine allocations should pick up beginning the week of April 22nd. In the meantime, COVID-19 vaccine eligibility will expand to anyone 16 years or older starting April 15.
And California plans to end nearly all COVID-19 business limitations on June 15 provided that vaccine supply is sufficient and hospitalization rates are low and stable.
