‘Demand isn’t there.’ As Fresno residents refuse vaccine, doses shipped to other counties
About 28,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine allocated to Fresno County this week was re-directed to other counties in the central San Joaquin Valley and around the state because of a significant drop in demand for the shots, local health officials said Thursday.
“We had a 40,000-dose allocation this week, but we actually didn’t need all those doses,” said Joe Prado, community health manager for the Fresno County Department of Public Health. “We actually reallocated about 70% of our doses to other counties. … We don’t want to be holding on to doses we don’t necessarily need.”
The slowdown raises the prospect that the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects could be prolonged in Fresno County if the virus is able to continue spreading among people who have not been vaccinated against it.
“It’s just ‘Groundhog Day,’” said Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer, referring to a movie in which a man relives the same day over and over. “We’ll never end this pandemic unless people are protected, and the best way to get people protected is to get them vaccinated.”
“The vaccines are the light at the end of the tunnel,” Vohra said. “Now it’s up to us how long that tunnel lasts.”
For weeks, Fresno County had difficulty getting enough vaccine doses allocated to meet the needs of people who wanted to get their shots. That supply shortage let up over the past month in Fresno County and the Valley. That’s situation has reversed itself now, and thousands of available appointments for shots at county-run vaccination clinics are going unfilled.
“What we’re seeing is that demand isn’t there,” Prado said. “Supply is no longer an issue. It’s really the demand.”
It’s not only the county’s various mass-vaccination sites like the Fresno Fairgrounds. Prado said that his office is hearing from hospitals, medical offices and health clinics about a slowdown, too. “Everyone is definitely seeing a reduction in demand,” he said.
As a result, Fresno County plans to order only about 18,000 doses next week, even though it’s allocated up to 40,000 doses.
The downturn in demand comes even as California opened vaccine eligibility on Thursday to anyone over the age of 16, removing any priority tiers or limitations for shots based on age or occupation. Several Valley counties, including Fresno County, accelerated their opening of shots days earlier than the state.
Through Wednesday, more than 531,000 doses of vaccine have been administered to Fresno County residents, and more than 1 million doses given across Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties. More than one out of every five people living in Fresno County are now “fully vaccinated,” meaning they’ve either had both shots of the two-dose vaccines produced by Pfizer or Moderna, or a single shot of the one-dose product from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson.
But that’s well short of the county’s goal of getting about 1.2 million doses administered by the end of this summer – enough to vaccinate at least 60% of the population to approach a level of “herd immunity” in which people aren’t continuing to spread the virus from one person to another.
“If we want to get back to normal, this is our best shot, pardon the pun,” Vohra said. “This is the best shortcut we have to reopening everything the way that we want.”
Without such widespread immunity, he added, “the ramifications are we’re going to have to keep doing the masking and the social distancing, and the limited capacity (of businesses) and doing everything outdoors as much as possible, unless we can really trust that we have enough protection in our communities that we can start to do things in a more normal fashion.”
California and other states stopped giving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week after a small number of people suffered complications of blood clots. Scientists are now studying whether those cases are related to the vaccine before health providers resume offering the Johnson & Johnson product, Vohra said.
Despite that pause for one vaccine, there is ample supply of the other two products for residents, Vohra said. It’s simply a matter of getting people in for the shots. “We know there’s lots of people that we still need to reach,” he said.
The problems include access to vaccinations in some parts of the county, as well as reluctance among some people to getting the vaccine in the first place.
Prado said he expects the county to begin organizing more mobile clinics to communities and neighborhoods where there are lower numbers of people getting shots. He said his team will also be reaching out to public housing projects and to churches as possible avenues to make it easier for residents to get a vaccine.
“We are going to have to increase the amount of education outreach to really address vaccine hesitancy,” he added. “We’re just going to have to make adjustments … and seeing what it’s going to take to get a neighborhood and take the vaccine literally street by street and block by block.”
Thursday COVID-19 updates
The Fresno County Department of Public Health reported 19 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, as well as four additional deaths. To date, 100,376 residents have been infected with coronavirus at some point since March 2020, and 1,640 people have died.
Among other Valley counties, Thursday updates included:
Kings County: Seven new cases, 22,737 to date; no additional deaths, 245 to date.
Madera County: 14 new cases, 16,135 to date; no additional deaths, 239 to date.
Mariposa County: Two new cases, 419 to date; no additional deaths, seven to date.
Merced County: 23 new cases, 31,151 to date; two additional deaths, 452 to date.
Tulare County: 37 new cases, 49,355 to date; two additional deahts, 827 to date.
Valleywide, more than 220,000 people have contracted COVID-19 since the first local cases were reported 13 months ago. The region’s death toll from the virus to date is 3,410.
This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 3:56 PM.
