Quit holding out, Gov. Newsom. Fresno, San Joaquin Valley need more COVID vaccine
Hey, Gov. Gavin Newsom: Have you forgotten about your constituents in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley, your state’s bread basket? You promised that you wouldn’t. Remember?
Yet here we are, Week 2 of your administration’s supposedly ramped up COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and we’re still stuck in first gear. What gives, guv?
According to your health department’s own numbers, culled by our man Tim Sheehan, residents of Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties are being vaccinated at a far slower rate than other areas of California.
Compared to the coastal counties (from Los Angeles to the Oregon border), fewer than half the number of vaccinations have been administered in our region when the data is weighted for population.
Just 17 out of every 1,000 Valley residents have been vaccinated so far, according to the latest figures. The statewide average is 35.
But it’s not just California’s major population centers with their superior medical infrastructure that are getting priority. Fresno and the Valley even lag behind the sparsely populated interior counties in the state’s northern reaches.
Again, what gives? During your campaign, you told us you wanted to “break the meme of elected officials ignoring the Valley.”
Yeah, well, so much for that. The meme remains.
It would be one thing if county health departments in the Valley, or their partners, could only handle limited numbers of doses. If they lacked enough sub-zero freezers to store the vaccine, or a distribution network sufficient to get those shots into people’s upper arms.
But that’s not the case in Fresno County. Between the vaccination site at the Fresno fairgrounds, drive-up sites operated by Sierra Pacific Orthopedics and United Health Centers and other health care facilities, there is capacity to exceed the daily goal of 3,000 vaccinations set by Dr. Rais Vohra, the county’s interim health officer.
Vaccine allocation falls short of need
The problem, Gov. Newsom, is that your health department keeps giving us the short shrift. Our county officials established a schedule based on a model of 30,000 vaccinations per week, and you ship them 10,000 or fewer. (Yes, private clinics get their doses directly from the state. Still not enough.)
How are we supposed to make a dent in our hideous COVID-19 metrics with that? We need a fire hose, and you hand us a spray bottle.
“We’re going to run out of vaccine if our allocation doesn’t increase,” Vohra said earlier this week. “We’re ready for twice or three times the allocation we’re getting.”
Things have gotten to the point where partners like Sierra Pacific Orthopedics are being instructed not to exceed 1,000 daily doses, even though they have the capacity to administer more. The fear is there won’t be enough supply for everyone who got a first shot to get the required second injection in three (Pfizer) or four (Moderna) weeks time.
As a result of the dwindling supply, vaccine appointments up and down the Valley are booked solid and clinics being canceled.
Need I remind you, Gov. Newsom, that Fresno and its neighboring counties boast some of the highest rates of new COVID-19 positive cases per day, as well as positivity rates that exceed the state average. Our ICUs have zero availability.
We need your help to get those numbers down. A lot more than you’re currently giving.
Fresno clinic: ‘We got absolutely flooded’
Mostly, you’ve given us confusion. That was some bait and switch your administration pulled last week when the state Department of Public Health issued a press release announcing “Seniors 65+ Now Eligible to Receive COVID-19 Vaccine …”
Then you held a video conference and doubled down on what turned out to be a false pledge.
You do realize what happened next? People 65 and older crowd descended upon vaccination sites in droves. Catching providers, expecting to service only health care workers and the 75 and older crowd, totally unprepared.
“We got absolutely flooded — there was a line of 4,000-5,000 people backed up 4½ miles,” said Rick Lembo, director of sports medicine for Sierra Pacific Orthopedics in northeast Fresno. “We take our direction from the county, but as soon as (Newsom) opened it to 65 year olds, it was like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. …
“We had people showing up who said, ‘I just heard the governor say 65 and up on the news 15 minutes ago. I’m in line and I want my shot.’ It caused a ton of confusion, but we did our best to accommodate everyone.”
That was your doing, governor. I get that putting together a plan to vaccinate 40 million people is no simple task, but c’mon. Larry, Curly and Moe couldn’t have handled those logistics any worse.
You’ve surely seen the news analysis of data released by the Centers for Disease Control. California ranks near the bottom of vaccinations per 100,000 people. And, as you’ve tweeted, just 40% of the state’s doses have been administered. The rest are stuck in deep freeze.
Nowhere in your state are those failures felt more deeply than in Fresno and the Valley, Gov. Newsom. Quit holding out and give us the vaccine we desperately need.
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 10:10 AM.
