Name: Dozens of non-health care Santa Clara County employees got excess COVID vaccine
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Dozens of non-health care Santa Clara County employees got excess COVID vaccine

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By | Bay Area News GroupSanta Clara County has provided excess vaccine doses over the past month to a top county official and dozens of other non-health care workers, raising new questions about providers’ discretion to vaccinate lower-priority people amid a chaotic statewide rollout.While Santa Clara County is not the only provider to encounter the issue, its choices are raising eyebrows in part because the county has simultaneously taken a hard-line stance against other providers who deviate from normal protocols, recently cutting off vaccine to Good Samaritan Hospital because it improperly vaccinated teachers in Los Gatos.Since Jan. 11th, the county has relied on a written plan that explains what to do with excess vaccine, which must be used promptly once it begins to thaw. It calls for first offering the vaccine to those in Phase 1A, the highest priority, followed by those 75 years of age and older, and then transporting vaccines to Valley Specialty Center at VMC or Saint Louise Regional Hospital.As counties across the state scramble to ethically manage extra day-to-day doses in the context of an overall shortage, the protocol appears to leave room for what happens next. At least twice, fast-thawing vaccines have landed in the arms of county employees who are considered part of Phase 1B, including County Counsel James Williams and others who do not regularly come face-to-face with coronavirus patients. Some of these employees, including Williams, are also much younger than those now being prioritized for vaccination.The most sizable group was vaccinated on Dec. 30th, nearly two weeks before the county established written rules for extra doses, when County Executive Jeff Smith authorized about 45 county employees who work in the county’s emergency operations center to get vaccines that the county says were otherwise headed toward the garbage.State guidelines prioritize health care workers and those living in long-term care facilities in Phase 1A, followed by those over 65, educators, food and agriculture workers and emergency responders in Phase 1B, of which the EOC employees are part.“These are by definition not slots known in advance. These are not appointments made — what was unique that one day was that it was a much larger number,” said Williams, who is in his late 30s. “Usually we’re talking about onesies, twosies or maybe a dozen.”Around 4 p.m. on Dec. 30, Smith said he received a call that Valley Medical Center’s employee health center had a batch of unused Pfizer doses and no higher priority health care workers nearby who needed it. With about 90 minutes left to administer the doses, Smith allowed those physically present in the San Jose emergency operations headquarters — among them Williams, clerical workers, analysts and other support staff — to receive their first doses that afternoon. Williams said he was one of the “very, very last people in line.”At that time, about 6,000 county health care workers and support staff had been vaccinated countywide.“There wasn’t an available group of people at the hospital, so emergency operations center staff seemed reasonable to me,” Smith said. “My thought process was, ‘Well, if there aren’t any doctors and nurses and technologists available, then we should move to emergency services.’ ”The state’s vaccination guidelines as of December give some discretion to providers in moving down the priority list when vaccines are about to expire or people don’t show up for appointments. Health departments may “” only after “intensive and appropriate efforts to reach the groups prioritized at that moment,” according to the California Department of Public Health, which did not respond to a request for comment Friday.Yet how exactly those scenarios play out in reality has caused both confusion and heated debate. Last week, the county for offering what the hospital said were excess vaccines to teachers — also under the Phase 1B grouping. The county contended the hospital’s actions included a “problematic” series of events in which teachers were offered vaccines at future dates, not just excess vaccine.County workers in Phase 1B have received vaccines only on the day they became available and only barring other options, Smith and Williams said.In another instance on Jan. 12th, Deputy Director of Emergency Management David Flamm alerted emergency operations staff, public health field staff and other 1B workers to a registration link to sign up for same-day appointments “approved by county leadership,” according to the email obtained by this news organization.Flamm said Friday it was the only time he was asked to send out such an email, and the vaccines appeared to be accessible at multiple sites. “DO NOT FORWARD!!!!!” the email told recipients, adding, “If you are not able to get vaccinated today, we anticipate that there will be additional days in the next few weeks when this opportunity may arise.”“With all the vaccination operations going on, it seems to me that there’s always a bit of a delta between those administered and cancellations, or any other number of issues, so I just anticipated that could potentially happen again,” Flamm said.In total, there have been “at least a couple” instances of 1B workers receiving vaccines in addition to the Dec. 30th group, but with far fewer numbers, Smith said.“We were in a situation where we have a scarcity of vaccines, a challenge with interpreting the state rules, lots of people who would like to have the vaccine — and we were trying, and have still been trying, to focus initially on health care professionals and emergency responders,” Smith said. “It’s a use it or lose it situation.”&nbsp;We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. 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By | Bay Area News GroupSanta Clara County has provided excess vaccine doses over the past month to a top county official and dozens of other non-health care workers, raising new questions about providers’ discretion to vaccinate lower-priority people amid a chaotic statewide rollout.While Santa Clara County is not the only provider to encounter the issue, its choices are raising eyebrows in part because the county has simultaneously taken a hard-line stance against other providers who deviate from normal protocols, recently cutting off vaccine to Good Samaritan Hospital because it...

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Fiona Kelliher is a breaking news reporter at The Mercury News. She previously covered housing and real estate for the San Francisco Business Times. Originally from Minneapolis, she is a fan of almost any food that is fried and eaten on a stick.

https://www.mercurynews.com/author/fiona-kelliher/

Fiona Kelliher

Latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news from reporters & columnists at The Mercury News.

Dozens of non-health care Santa Clara County employees got excess COVID vaccine

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