COVID: Bay Area officials pushing state to change vaccine distribution plan
Elected officials from San Jose, San Francisco and elsewhere are pushing the governor's office to change the way California distributes its COVID-19 vaccine.
State officials are considering concerns of Bay Area legislators who say many of the region’s hardest-hit communities were unfairly excluded from a plan to dedicate more of California’s limited supply of coronavirus vaccine to the state’s most at-risk residents.
In a call on Monday morning, the lawmakers urged Gov. Newsom’s office to rethink the plan. State Sen. Dave Cortese, Morgan Hill Mayor Rich Constantine and others from across the region say the state’s plan to use the Healthy Places Index to reserve about 40% of its vaccine supply for vulnerable residents in several hundred ZIP codes leaves out equally at-risk residents across the Bay Area. The index, which relies on income, education levels and other factors, included just 10 Bay Area ZIP codes but left out virus-ravaged neighborhoods in East San Jose, North Central San Mateo and elsewhere.
“To me, it means life and death for people,” said Cortese, a San Jose Democrat.
During a hastily scheduled conversation with officials from the governor’s office late Monday morning, Cortese said, he and other Bay Area lawmakers said the use of the HPI index obscures some very needy neighborhoods that are adjacent to and share ZIP codes with more affluent communities. To fix the issue, Cortese said participants on the call offered a number of suggestions, including incorporating other county-level data on where the virus has struck the hardest.
Cortese and Constantine said state officials requested 24 hours to study the issue but seem open to making changes to the formula. Bay Area officials had planned to hold a news conference Monday morning, but scrapped that plan to speak with state officials instead.
In Morgan Hill, for instance, the city only has one ZIP code but multiple census tracts. Solely looking at the city’s ZIP code does not accurately capture certain areas of Morgan Hill that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, particularly areas where people of color and farmworkers are concentrated, Constantine said Monday.
“The current system just doesn’t work,” Constantine said.
Though it’s unclear what California officials will decide in the next 24 hours and how they might reconfigure the state’s vaccination distribution system to hard-hit areas, Constantine said he’s optimistic.
“I’m pleasantly surprised that the state has actually listened and that they seem to want to actually work with us,” Constantine said. “I have no doubt that the state understands our concerns and wants to make sure the vaccines are distributed in the most equitable way possible.”
Cortese agreed.
“They’re receptive,” the senator said, adding that Mark Ghaly, the state’s top health official, has been involved in the conversations.
State officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cortese said the Bay Area leaders agree with the state that equitable vaccine distribution should be a priority, and are not fighting the 40% figure. But they want counties to have more control when it comes to targeting needy areas with vaccine.
When asked whether it made sense to change the formula to benefit the Bay Area in a way that could ultimately remove vaccine supply for other hard-hit areas in the Central Valley and Southern California, Cortese said any changes would likely not be dramatic, but he would want the county to have more say over where vaccine lands.
“It’s just got everybody really upset,” he said. “I hope they come back with a fix pretty quick because I’m afraid that sort of anger is going to continue to foment out there and rightly so.”
Check back for updates on this developing story.