State of California details vaccine distribution plan

The State of California plans to place orders for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. The first doses are expected to arrive in the next two weeks. They will be distributed according to six regions, distinct from the stay-at-home order regions announced Thursday.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Governor Newsom said help is on the way in the form of vaccines and announced a distribution plan that priorities frontline workers.

Newsom said the state is expecting to receive 327,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by mid-December. The state will begin placing orders with Pfizer on Friday.

California's vaccine distribution plan is broken up in to six regions, based on the state’s vaccination protocols. The six regions are separate from the five stay at home order regions. The Bay Area falls under Region II, an area made up of 16 counties, and is expected to receive 80,497 doses of the vaccine.

The distribution plan is sub-prioritized into three tiers. The vaccine will first go to people in Tier 1. It prioritizes those work in acute care, psychiatric, and correctional facility hospitals, skilled nursing, and assisted living facilities, as well as paramedics, EMTs, and dialysis centers.

Tier 2 prioritizes intermediate care facilities, home health & supportive services, community health workers, public health field staff and primary care clinics, including rural health centers, correctional facility clinics and urgent care clinics

Tier 3 prioritizes other healthcare settings like specialty clinics, laboratory workers, dental or oral health clinics, and pharmacy staff not working in settings at higher tiers.

“We will be very aggressive in making sure that those with means, those with influence, are not crowding out those that are most deserving of the vaccine,” Newsom said. “Those that think that they can get ahead of the line, or those that think they will have resources that will allow them to do it, we’ll be monitoring that very closely.”

Newsom said the distribution plan is based on equity and fairness, according to recommendations from the state’s Drafting Guidelines Workgroup & Community Advisory Committee.

“Help is on the way,” he said. “There is light at the end of this tunnel.”

Newsom said the state will be learning more in the coming weeks about subsequent vaccine distributions. Those vaccines will be coming from Moderna and distributed through McKesson, but the timeline remains unclear.

Here are the six regions and vaccine allocations:

Region I: 126,750

Los Angeles
Orange
San Diego
San Luis Obispo
Santa Barbara
Ventura

Region II: 80,497

Alameda
Contra Costa
Del Norte
Humboldt
Lake
Marin
Mendocino
Monterey
Napa
San Benito
San Francisco
San Mateo
Santa Clara
Shasta
Solano
Sonoma