Update: Fresno County without nearly 8,000 vaccine doses as national weather stalls delivery
Fresno County officials were buoyed by an increase of coronavirus vaccine doses headed their way – 18,000 this week after 19,000 last week, a significant increase from the 8,000 they had been receiving.
But brutal inclement weather has impacted much of the country, impacting the delivery of vaccines to many places including Fresno.
Some 7,800 does of the Moderna vaccines had not been delivered as of Thursday morning, according to Joe Prado, Community Health Division Manager, Fresno County Department of Public Health. There is no word on when the doses may arrive.
“We are working with medical providers in the community to provide them the necessary doses from our supply this week to avoid cancellation of appointments.”
The county is not alone in waiting out delivery.
San Diego County officials on Wednesday said they had been informed that several shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines would not be arriving as scheduled.
“While it doesn’t snow in San Diego, the snow is directly impacting San Diego,” county supervisor Nathan Fletcher said, at a press conference. “We have received word that several shipments that were scheduled to arrive this week will not be arriving due to weather constraints that are impacting the entire country.
“Moderna’s primary manufacturing facility is in Michigan and Pfizer’s is in Massachusetts. Both of those along with the routes from there to here have been impacted by the snow and the weather conditions we’re seeing across the country and so this is going to impact our ability to administer vaccines this week.”
San Diego County, Fletcher said, could pause vaccinations at some sites as early as Thursday and the county likely will have to reschedule appointments for those seeking a first or second dose of vaccine.
In San Luis Obispo County, public health officer Dr. Penny Borenstein said some scheduled appointments for second doses are reliant on a shipment of coronavirus vaccines that had yet to arrive.
Officials in Oregon also said a shipment of vaccines expected to have been delivered on Tuesday had been delayed.
In Fresno County there have been 135,254 vaccine doses administered and at 13,827.8 per 100,000 residents is the most in the San Joaquin Valley, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times.
The California Department of Public Health on Wednesday released data on who has been receiving those shots and while Blacks represent about 6% of the roughly 1 million residents of Fresno County they are being left behind in vaccination efforts, receiving fewer than 2% of those doses.
Whites have received 31.5% of vaccine doses and Hispanic/Latino residents representing almost 58% of the population in the county have received 24.4%.
New case, hospitalization updates for Central Valley
Fresno County reported 132 new confirmed coronavirus cases and has had a total of 93,363 since the start of the pandemic. The 7- and 14-day averages are down to 233 and 273 new cases.
There were 50 new deaths in the county, 1,341 total. The number of patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 was down by four to 324 and the number in intensive care units was down five to 82.
Here are the coronavirus case and deaths updates Central San Joaquin Valley counties and hospitalization data from the California Department of Public Health:
Kings County
- 38 new cases; 21,696 total
- 4 new deaths; 213 total
- 56 hospitalized (-4); 11 in ICU
Madera County
- 9 new cases; 15,073 total
- 0 new deaths; 201 total
- 39 hospitalized (-7); 13 in ICU
Mariposa County
- 0 new cases; 388 total
- 0 new deaths; 7 total
- 0 hospitalized; 0 in ICU
Merced County
- 105 new cases; 28,306 total
- 0 new deaths; 382 total
- 33 hospitalized (-1); 12 in iCU
Tulare County
- 286 new cases; 47,220 total
- 9 new deaths; 706 total
- 95 hospitalized (-); 13 in ICU (+2)
Statewide, there were 4,090 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and a total of 3,416,147, according to the CDPH. There were 400 new deaths, though the 7- and 14-day averages are down to 359 and 407.
The 4,090 new cases were the fewest in a day since late October.
There are now more than 27.8 million confirmed cases in the United States, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and 490,540 deaths.
The U.S. has more than twice as many coronavirus-related deaths than any other country. Brazil is second with 242,090 and Mexico is third with 177,061.
Kings County transitions to MyTurn vaccination system
Kings County, which has administered only 10,156 doses of coronavirus vaccine, started its transition on Wednesday to MyTurn, the state’s online platform to schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
Appointments this week will be rolled out in phases to ensure the system is working properly before it becomes available countywide, according to a county press release, and the only appointments available are for vaccination at the Kings County Department of Public Health clinic in Hanford.
In addition to the appointments made through MyTurn, the Kings County Department of Public Health will continue to contact individuals on its existing wait list to schedule appointments at various locations throughout the county.
Kings County, at 6,768.6 doses per 100,000 residents, is the lowest of any county in the state.
The bottom three counties are all from the central San Joaquin Valley – Merced County (8,888.2 per 100,000), Mariposa County (6,784.5) and Kings County (6,768.6).
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 7:33 AM.