The latest bullshit from the county I live in.
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE CARMEL PINE CONE
January 6, 2021, 2:02 p.m.
MORENO PROVIDES SCANT INFORMATION ABOUT VACCINATION OUTLOOK
• No timetable for seniors or the public
In an update on vaccinations in Monterey County, health officer Dr. Ed Moreno told reporters today that the county has so far received a total of 17,075 doses of vaccine — for a county of about 450,000 people. The doses have been provided by manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna to the county health department, hospitals and medical clinics.
CHOMP, SVMH and Natividad began vaccinating front-line doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers two weeks ago, and Moreno said about 200 firefighters, paramedics and EMTs were immunized last weekend. The county is also planning to host more vaccination clinics soon to inoculate people who work in dialysis centers and other critical job sectors, he said. The county is currently immunizing people who are in the
first tier of the CDC's Phase 1a.
“Several of our primary care clinics have received approval to start administering vaccine to frontline staff,” he added.
While Moreno said the county is moving toward vaccinating people in the two other tiers within Phase 1a, including those who work in the education and agricultural industries, he was unable to say how many people have already been vaccinated in the county or provide a timeline on who will be immunized when.
“I don’t know what percentage has been vaccinated,” according to Moreno, who said the county is trying to gather data from a state vaccination database to find the answer to that.
Moreno said his staff has informed him that CVS and Walgreens — which have been contracted by the state department of public health to administer vaccine — have made arrangements to immunize residents who live in 11 skilled nursing facilities in Monterey County. Moreno did not identify any of the facilities or say when the immunizations would occur.
Moreno was equally non-committal during a meandering presentation to the county board of supervisors yesterday. When pressed by 2nd District supervisor John Phillips for an estimate when county residents would be vaccinated, Moreno said, “I can’t provide timelines at this point, which I can understand can be [concerning] for people who have been waiting to get vaccinated and have been doing all the right things to stay at home and avoid getting exposed. But I would be very hesitant to create timelines which could lead to disappointment to people who are counting on getting a vaccine by a certain date.”
Phillips also asked Moreno whether the county was “getting enough vaccine” to immunize the more than 400,000 people who live here. Moreno responded by saying the amount is “adequate,” but also added this:
“Given the option to get more vaccine, I think we would definitely opt for getting more vaccine than we are getting now, and that’s because if we had more vaccine, we would be able to probably plan to move a little bit faster through the tiers,” including vaccinating the “larger groups” in the CDC's tiers.
NO MAJOR SLOWDOWN EVIDENT IN LATEST CORONAVIRUS DATA
The most recent shutdown order affecting county residents and businesses went into effect more than three weeks ago, but has so far had very little noticeable impact on the epidemic in Monterey County.
This morning the California Department of Public Health said there were a total of 190 coronavirus-positive inpatients in the county's four hospitals, which is down from the record of 203 patients on Jan. 3, but is still enough to put a very heavy burden on the county's hospitals. There were 33 Covid-19 patients in Monterey County's ICUs, the CDPH said — also down, but only a little, from the record 38 ICU patients in the county the day after Christmas.
There were 411 new coronavirus cases confirmed among county residents yesterday, the Monterey County health department said this morning. That makes a total of 3,232 cases over the last week, an increase from the 2,757 cases during the week ending Dec. 30. However, the reporting of such data has become so erratic, it's hard to know if this week's numbers mean anything. Please check the "cases by zip code" table below to track the progress of the epidemic in your community.
To see the latest coronavirus data from the Monterey County health department, click
here. For the most up-to-date info from the CDPH, click
here. CHOMP has a very useful page with detailed information about the vaccines, which you can find
here. To review the CDC-reccomended tiers for vaccination priority, click
here. And below, you can also find our latest charts and tables about the status of the epidemic in Monterey County, including cases by zip code.
