Sonoma County congressmen promise sharp increase in COVID-19 vaccine doses coming soon

Sonoma County’s congressmen Monday assured local residents big waves of coronavirus vaccines would be arriving in the coming weeks.

U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said recent steps taken by the Biden administration, including last week’s passage of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and the deployment of the Defense Production Act, finally will alleviate the scarcity of available vaccine doses in the county, California and across the country.

The county’s vaccination campaign has been crippled by severe shortages of weekly doses since it started in mid-December. For that reason, three months into the ongoing effort only 14.5%, or 59,571, of local residents have received the two required shots of Pfizer and Moderna inoculations or the single Johnson & Johnson shot.

“It’s coming and we will have the transparency and accountability to make sure that three weeks out, on a rolling basis, you’re going to see waves and waves of more vaccine come into Sonoma County,” Huffman said.

Neither he nor Thompson provided any statistics or estimates of upcoming vaccine shipments here to back up their assertions on Monday, during a press briefing with a large group of state, county and local elected leaders.

President Joe Biden said he wanted 100 million shots to go into the arms of Americans in his first 100 days in office, and White House officials said Monday the accelerated vaccine rollout will make it possible to achieve that goal by March 25.

Biden said Friday by May 1 there should be enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to make all adults nationwide eligible for inoculations.

As part of the vaccination blitz, the Biden administration recently helped broker a deal for pharmaceutical arch-rivals Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson to work together to produce millions more vaccine doses.

“That doesn’t just happen out of goodwill,” Huffman said.

The confidence and assurances from election officials comes at a time when vaccine supplies in Sonoma County have been flat for weeks, averaging a little more than 7,700 doses the past three weeks. This week, the county is expected to receive a slight uptick in supply, about 8,600 doses, with the majority of that going to residents’ second shots, said Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer. To date, 66,662 residents have received a single shot and await a second.

Because of that, efforts to expand vaccinations in the county’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods have been effectively stalled, Mase said.

Specifically, only 16% of Latino residents, who comprise 27% of the local population, have been vaccinated. That number did reach a high of 17% in recent weeks, following slow progress in mid-February when the county partnered with area health clinics to inoculate farm workers and other employees deemed essential such as restaurant and grocer employees.

“That's just not good enough, so we're going to continue to push to make sure that we administer vaccines to those communities most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19,” said Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

County officials are asking health insurer Blue Shield, the state’s third-party administrator in charge of managing and distributing vaccines in California, to ensure that the county’s disadvantaged communities are given proper priority for shots.

Mase also said that as of Monday anyone at least age 16 with physical disabilities or underlying medical conditions is eligible to receive the vaccine, but tight supply will limit vaccination availability.

When the county on Feb. 19 announced its biggest expansion of vaccination eligibility by opening it to residents 65 to 69, nearly 34,000 more locals became eligible for shots. Almost a month later, only 7,211 people in that age group have gotten both shots in their arms — another indicator of the vaccine shortage plaguing the county.

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