Approximately 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine are in freezers waiting to be administered in Santa Clara County, according to new data.
Santa Clara is one of the first counties to publish COVID-19 data on how many doses are administered to each provider and how many are used.
As of Thursday, of the 280,000 doses received by suppliers, more than 96,000 remain unused.
Although larger medical providers such as Stanford Health and Kaiser Permanente have administered more than 70% of their doses, smaller providers appear to be struggling, the data reveals.
San Jose’s Northeast Medical Services (NEMS), which specifically target underserved Asian communities, had the lowest injection rate with only 12% of their doses administered. They had about 2,000 doses waiting.
It seems that two other providers who also cater to vulnerable minority populations are also having a great time. Asian Americans for Community Involvement (ICAO) administered 21% of the vaccine supply and more than a thousand doses remained. And Bay Area Community Health (BACH) administered 22% of its stock and had nearly two thousand unused doses.
“It simply came to our notice then. There is also a lot of vaccination hesitation in our population, “said Dr. Kenneth Tai, chief physician at NEMS. Tai said his organization and other smaller providers and clinics face unique challenges in reaching some of the most vulnerable populations in our community.
“We literally received the vaccines last week. Only internally, we need to train our staff how to do the questionnaire, how to do the injections, and so on. Most work overtime, ”Dr. Tai said.
BACH sent an email to our research unit saying that their unused doses are the result of:
- The extreme weather destroys some of its vaccine structures
- Many of your patients are taking the wait-and-see approach
- Getting patients over the age of 75 to schedule appointments is an outreach challenge
- Most community clinics do not have scalable technology platforms for programming
“Those in disadvantaged communities have the highest risk of not getting the vaccine at an appropriate time,” Graham Knaus told the California State Association of Counties. “We are doubling our efforts to try to reach those communities in an incredibly complex and changing system every day.”
Smaller providers, such as NEMS, said they have administered more doses than is reflected in the data. There is currently no uniform county, state, or federal vaccination reporting system, so some providers are forced to create their own workflows.
Our research unit contacted other counties to compare data, but Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, and San Francisco counties have not yet released vendor-based information.
“We’re doing everything we can to get the vaccines in people’s arms and we want to get the job done,” Dr. Tai said.
Candice Nguyen is an investigative journalist in the NBC Bay Area. To contact her about this story or others, email her at [email protected].