The Santa Clara County public health system is on track to vaccinate 30,000 residents a week, officials said Friday.
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center has established five vaccination sites, including mass vaccination sites at Berger Drive and Santa Clara County.
The location of Berger has the capacity to vaccinate 1,300 people and the fairgrounds can vaccinate 1,800 people a day.
Another vaccination site will open next week in Mountain View and the county plans to open a third mass vaccination site with more capacity than the fairgrounds, said Dr. Jennifer Tong, chief associate physician at Valley Valley Medical Center. Santa Clara.
“Our system only vaccinated more than 3,000 people this Monday, more than 4,000 this week Tuesday and Wednesday each, more than 5,000 yesterday and we have more than 6,000 appointments scheduled today,” Tong said. “So we’re going up very fast.”
The county health system only administered 32,352 first doses and 6,594 second doses to eligible health workers and people 75 years of age or older in the county as of Thursday.
But the main limitation to vaccinating more people is the supply of vaccines.
“We really need a stable and predictable supply to be able to predict our capacity and expand our capacity in the future,” Tong said.
County Attorney James Williams said the blame lies with the federal government, changing federal and state guidelines on a daily basis and subsequently a lot of misinformation.
“We learned a few days ago, for example, that the federal government was going to release stocks of vaccines that were kept for a second dose,” Williams said. “We learned this morning that this stock does not exist.”
The other big problem is that the distribution of vaccines is fragmented, with no real organized plan in the county, Williams said.
Large health care systems in several counties, such as Kaiser Permanente, get their vaccines from the state, which Williams said is the “crux of the challenge” because the majority of the population is insured through these large health systems.
Federal agencies also govern in the distribution of vaccines and a federal program with Walgreens and CVS heads the distribution of vaccines to residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
A Jan. 7 public health order seeks to mediate this problem by requiring hospitals, clinics and all immunization administrators to share information with the county and submit a immunization plan by Feb. 1.
But the health order can only do so much because federal programs and agencies are not required to share information with the county, Williams said.
However, county officials like supervisor Otto Lee are hopeful with a new administration, vaccination will be better.
“New President-elect Biden has talked about 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his term,” Lee said. “And we will hold him accountable to make sure this happens.”
Meanwhile, as the county faces its biggest increase to date, officials are urging residents to follow health orders, stay home as long as possible, and avoid meetings.
“Now we finally feel the impact of Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings,” Lee said. “That number won’t go down unless we all work together to keep ourselves socially distant, put on masks, and unless it’s absolutely necessary, don’t go out and meet.”
For more information on immunization in Santa Clara County, visit sccfreevax.org.