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Full Version: SCC now ok with PAMF & Kaiser
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About noon today, Santa Clara County (quietly?) dropped the admonition that their vaccine was not for PAMF & Kaiser patients.  The web site still says they should check with their provider (PAMF & Kaiser) but it no longer asks if you are not a PAMF & Kaiser patient.

If you live in SCC and use this, note that the Fairgrounds location says it is only for Phase 1A people (65+ are Phase 1B Tier 1).

I was able to make an appointment tomorrow.  Some distance from my house, but that's ok.
Apparently Kaiser has been forced to cancel some 1st shots in San Mateo. The reason: they won't have enough to deliver the second on time to clients that are coming due.

This implies that Kaiser is not sitting on a lot of vaccine in the 'fridge. I wonder if the county is having trouble with distribution. I wonder if something similar is happening in SCC and they are willing to give doses to insured folks for that reason. SMC is converting the fair ground from testing to vaccine.

If my speculative chain is true, why not just send some vaccines to Kaiser/PAMF to get shots into arms?
SCC's vaccine info has stopped separating allocated doses into 1st and 2nd doses.

But, compared to before, Stanford has not gotten any doses for a couple of weeks and has distributed 61% of their doses as 1st doses and 36% as 2nd doses, leaving them in dire straits for 2nd doses.

Kaiser has distributed 48.9% of their total doses as 1st doses (they got 11K doses last week, but likely they are holding them as 2nd doses).

Sutter has distributed 68% of their doses as 1st doses, but they had no early 1st doses, so they aren't in dire straits yet on 2nd doses. They only got 302 doses last week.

SCC Health has given out 66% of their doses as 1st doses.

Reading these tea leaves, it looks to me like the state is not giving anything now but 2nd doses to the health providers.

I (and others) knew this was going to happen. If production is constant, and you go with the so-called Biden plan, you get a wave of 1st doses for a month, followed by an equal wave of 2nd doses for the 2nd month (with no first doses for that month), and then back and forth.

An unfortunate consequence is that if you have one organization (SCC Health) giving out an unsustainable number of first doses (SCC Health has given out 2/3 of their doses as 1st doses, then they will say "Hey, we require all the doses being shipped as 2nd doses for the people we gave 1st doses too." So everyone else is shortchanged. Indeed, with an organization like that, it is likely that 2nd doses won't be there when needed.

Confused how that can be? It is a matter of timing. If one stayed with the earlier "Don't ship first doses without a 2nd dose in hand", then there will always be a second dose. But if you depend upon later production to cover 2nd doses, you're OK with a steady supply if there are no lulls and spikes in usage.

But, if you build up a supply of unused doses and then use it all up in a short time (hello, California), you will get a large demand for 2nd doses 3(or 4) weeks later when that week's production can't cover it.

So, worse than the problem right now of no first doses will be the problem of not enough doses being produced to cover the required 2nd doses.
In short, by not looking at the split of 1st and 2nd doses I came to the wrong conclusion. Distribution on the county level here is fine. The large percentage being held back is to give 2nd doses on time.