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Starting next week, Orange County will devote about a third of new coronavirus vaccine shipments to those working in education, child care and food and agriculture sectors – a gear shift into the county’s next phase of mass immunization.
But short-term plans will be at the mercy of recent extreme winter weather, which has frozen supply lines of an already logistically scarce vaccine.
A new range of workers, from teachers to grocery store workers, will imminently be invited to sign up for shots, according to a county memo released Friday, Feb. 19. A specific date workers in these sectors would start being vaccinated was not specified.
Other traditional health care networks and pharmacies receiving allocations from the state, which have launched their own mass vaccination drives, would need to follow the same eligibility and allocation guidelines, the memo said.
“Othena is sending information about the state’s updated guidance to all registered users, explaining how the changes may affect their place in the digital waiting room,” said the memo, sent by OC Health Care Agency director and county health officer Dr. Clayton Chau to the county Board of Supervisors.
Extending eligibility to the new groups, commonly referred to as Phase 1b, will slow down vaccinations for seniors, Chau noted.
“This change to eligibility guidelines will mean a slower vaccine rollout for individuals who are currently eligible under Phase 1a (mainly health care workers) and people age 65 and older.”
It also wasn’t immediately clear whether larger shipments of both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots were on tap to support the expansion to new essential workers – low dose availability has constricted a nationwide operation to immunize as many people as possible.
Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who sits on the board’s vaccine task force, said the county has recently been receiving about 35,000 to 40,000 doses a week.
It’s challenging to find the best and fairest way to divide them up, with so many people clamoring for shots, he said.
“We all want to get out from under” the threat of COVID-19, Chaffee said, adding that as educators, grocery workers and others are added to the eligible list, “I hope that we still continue to give priority to our hardest hit groups, which are our seniors – there’s lots of those we haven’t gotten to yet.”
However, the board memo noted that a new one-dose Johnson & Johnson-brand vaccine is expected to be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, Feb. 26.
“We anticipate that this third vaccine platform option will increase vaccine supply and help us to vaccinate more people more quickly,” the memo said.
With a growing array of large and small-scale public vaccination sites, county staff for weeks have been administering shots to health care workers, first responders, people who live and work in skilled nursing facilities and anyone age 65 and older who lives or works in Orange County.
“Starting next week, 30% of the county’s vaccine allocation, including those for the multi-county entities like UCI, Kaiser and Providence here in Orange County, will be designated for our educators, child care, food and agriculture sectors,” Chau said in email to a reporter Thursday, Feb. 18. “We will start to vaccinate these folks.”
However, vaccinators also have had to account for the supply chain disruption caused by a cold snap affecting much of the country.
Because of the delays and supply shortages, county leaders on Thursday announced the Disneyland Super POD (point of dispensing) in Anaheim would close through Monday, while another large-scale site at Soka University in Aliso Viejo would administer time-sensitive second doses only.
“Once vaccine supplies are replenished and the Super POD locations reopen, we will prioritize second dose vaccinations for people who received their first dose through Othena and individuals who are eligible in Phase 1b,” the memo said.
About 207,000 doses had been administered by Friday to people who have registered on Othena, the county’s vaccine administration system – about 674,000 people have registered through the app and website.
On Feb. 9, Chau told the Board of Supervisors that he would hold off for two weeks on extending the county’s shots to educators, food service workers and other groups that the state had just made eligible while a backlog of seniors who hadn’t yet been vaccinated was worked through.
The memo on Friday provided more details to the closures caused by the recent winter storms across the country: Super PODs at Disneyland and Soka University and a new one planned to launch next week at the Anaheim Convention Center would administer second doses only from “approximately” Tuesday, Feb. 23, through March 2.
“Individuals eligible under Phase 1b, will receive vaccinations at the Santa Ana College POD (a smaller site that opened Wednesday) and at school sites coordinated through the Orange County Department of Education,” the memo said.
Andrea Zinder, president of a local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, was pleased that grocery store and other workers would soon be able to get vaccinated.
“We are thrilled that the county is recognizing essential food workers who keep our communities fed while putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk,” Zinder said. “Accessibility to vaccines is also critical for our members in communities hit hard by this virus.”
The Orange County Department of Education has been working with the OC Health Care Agency to plan for the vaccination of educators and school employees.
Given the current supplies of vaccine doses Orange County is receiving, the focus will remain on getting doses to educators who are 65 and older and health workers at schools, Ian Hanigan, spokesman for the county education department, said Friday.
“We are working to get them vaccinated as quickly as supplies come in,” he said.
On Thursday, a distribution site was opened in Garden Grove specifically to inoculate those in education who were already eligible – those 65 and older and health workers – and it provided about 200 shots that first day, Hanigan said. But with the disruption of shipments caused by the storms, the vaccinations were put on pause Friday until more supplies are available.
People are being contacted to arrange a vaccination at the site, it is not taking walk-ups, Hanigan said. The Education Department is working through Othena for making appointments.
The Education Department plans to open more education-specific distribution sites at campuses across the county, with about seven expected to open by mid-April.
And more vaccines will be needed.
“We are all in agreement that we need to get vaccine out there to educators who want them,” Hanigan said. “The demand is certainly high and we will work though them as fast as we can.”
Educators have been frustrated by the delay and on Thursday called for “immediate” access for school staff.
More than 25 teachers unions in Orange County, several board members and La Habra City Superintendent Joanne Culverhouse signed a letter saying that unless vaccine access is granted to educators, “school reopenings and full-day returns will be unnecessarily prolonged and schools currently in distance learning will continue to experience the yo-yo effect of opening and closing due to repeated school staff quarantines.”
The pending expansion of eligibility “is a start,” said Denise Bradford, a board member with the California Teachers Association based in the Saddleback Valley district. “I think it’s hard to ramp up with low supply and now weather impeding vaccine arrival. But on the other hand, I don’t understand why teachers were so far down the list to begin with.”
Aside from the weather delays, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday the state expects more consistent vaccine shipments and expects its federal allotment to increase.
Newsom said that consistency gives the state the confidence to set aside a baseline of 75,000 first doses of vaccine each week for teachers, school staff and childcare workers.
Staff Writers Alicia Robinson and Heather McRea and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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