With Friday’s FDA emergency authorization of a second COVID-19 vaccine, thousands more inoculation doses will be arriving in California as officials work to immunize all of the state’s Phase 1a recipients.
While front-line health care workers began receiving their first shots last week, it’s expected the vaccine will not be given to nursing home residents and staff until this week at the earliest, though it will depend on the county and facility, Tony Chicotel, staff attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), said in an email response to the Northern California Record.
"Most of the facilities are getting it through CVS or Walgreens and need to set up multiple appointments for staff and residents,” Chicotel said. “Facilities don’t want to inoculate all the staff at once because it is expected that several staff members will feel ill and need to miss some time from work. So the optimum distribution will stagger the staff member shots.”
To inoculate all the 1a priority populations of direct health care providers and long-term care residents could take at least through February.
In a statement, Carmela Coyle, president & CEO of the California Hospital Association (CHA), noted that hospitals will vaccinate as many front-line health care workers as possible in the coming weeks and months, but the available supply will be limited.
“Until there are adequate supplies, the process of determining who gets the vaccine — and in what priority order — will be based on specific public health guidelines developed by the state's Department of Public Health and further refined by each county," Coyle said. "Additionally, hospitals may deploy various strategies to vaccinate their workforce, based on the unique types of medical services offered and staffing capabilities of each facility.”
There are about 270,000 front-line health care workers in California hospitals, including nurses and other clinical personnel, plus housekeeping, dietary staff, and other employees who come into contact with patients, Jan Emerson-Shea, CHA VP of external affairs, told the Record.
Amid the rollout process, it’s conceivable some people who aren’t part of the first group may also get the vaccine.
“I would expect that folks who are not part of the 1a group will get vaccine before all the nursing homes have had their chance,” Chicotel said. “There seems to be a fair amount of disorganization to the distribution so it seems highly likely that some people or groups will ‘jump the line’ albeit unintentionally.”
Chicotel also emphasized the importance of informed consent amid the pressure to combat the pandemic immediately.
“Residents with cognitive impairments or trouble communicating are at a real disadvantage because their families or supportive friends are banned from visiting and cannot help facilitate informed consent,” Chicotel said. “Once we’ve beaten back COVID, it’s time to get real reform in our long-term care system so that a future pandemic will be less damaging and less lethal.”