In his first press briefing of 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday briefly detailed which groups of Californians will be next in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as more doses become available.
The state, Newsom said, is still in the earliest phase of distribution, known as Phase 1A, with only about 454,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines having been administered so far to the roughly 3 million health care workers and long-term care residents in the highest priority category.
The next group on deck of roughly 8 million people â part of Phase 1B â will include residents 75 and older, as well as workers in education, child care, emergency services and food and agriculture, Newsom said. Next up will be residents 65 and over, incarcerated and homeless people and workers in critical manufacturing and transportation fields.
But that next phase may be a way off, as doses from both drugmakers have been slower to arrive in California than anticipated. Newsom said nearly 1.3 million doses are now in the hands of medical facilities across the state, with 611,500 more in transit.
“So we got work to do on this,” he said, noting the pace was “not good enough.”
“And obviously, as we move into January, we want to see things accelerate and we want to see things go much faster.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said more vaccine doses “canât come soon enough.” He noted that the relatively small supply the state has received to date would do little to slow the current surge. âEven if 100% of the doses that California has received were in arms already, it would not be soon enough,â he said, underscoring the importance of wearing masks and staying at home to reduce transmission.
The state’s vaccine advisory group will meet this Wednesday at 3 p.m. in a live-streamed forum to iron out more specific details on the next phase of the rollout, and begin planning for Phase C, encompassing a much larger group that will include people 50 and up as well as younger residents with underlying health conditions and disabilities.
Additionally, Newsom said his 2021 budget proposal, which he submits this week, includes $300 million for vaccine distribution, management and outreach.
Details of the vaccine rollout’s next phase come as California’s coronavirus death toll tops 26,500, with an average of nearly 38,000 new cases reported per day over the last week, an onslaught that has overwhelmed intensive care units in hospitals across much of the state.
And those grim figures, Newsom noted, don’t yet reflect the impact from recent holiday travel and gatherings, a factor he characterized as “a surge on top of the surge.” The virus, he added, “remains more deadly today than at any point in the history of this pandemic.”
The governor also said nearly 1,300 state and federal staff have been deployed to short-staffed facilities across California, and he outlined an oxygen support and delivery strategy.
â Matthew Green
Copyright 2021 KQED