Long Beach has been lauded as a model for its early and aggressive COVID-19 vaccine rollout success, but if the city moves too quickly through eligible people, the state could redirect doses of the vaccine to other areas in need, the governor said Wednesday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, on a visit to Cal State Long Beach, said if the city “is even sitting on a 100 vaccines,” they will be redirected to nearby areas such as Compton.
But Mayor Robert Garcia, standing behind the governor at the afternoon event, could be heard in the background saying, “There are no extras,” referring to doses of vaccine.
City officials on Wednesday said 16% of the city’s population has been vaccinated, including about two-thirds of eligible seniors. Others who are eligible include food workers, educators and health care workers.
In a city press conference later in the day, Garcia said the city could be finished with educators and food workers by next week. However, he said, the city is now in the process of “reaching people where they’re at” in underserved areas of the city through a series of mobile clinics.
The city this weekend will launch two new mobile vaccination units that will visit homebound senior residents. “That’s really the next phase of vaccinations,” Garcia said.
California cities will have to wait for vaccination tiers to be opened to other groups until the initial groups are “substantially addressed,” Newsom said.
Newsom said that the state has partnered with over 330 community-based organizations throughout the state to ensure that populations who are hard to reach or are vaccine-hesitant are getting good information about the vaccine.
Newsom acknowledged that as more versions of the vaccine become available, some people may want to try and shop around for the one that they think is best. He added that the best version is the one that’s available.
“I’d take the J&J vaccine tomorrow, but it’s not my turn,” Newsom said of the recently approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The state received about 21,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week, out of its 1.58 million total doses. Next week the Johnson & Johnson allocation could be as high as 320,000, something that could make vaccinating hard to reach populations easier because it only requires one dose and is less temperature-dependent than the Moderna or Pfizer versions.
Newsom said that herd immunity could be reached in the next 100 days if the supply of vaccines to the state keeps up.
Overall case rates and positivity rates in the state are dropping and that has led to speculation that more sectors of the economy could open, specifically professional sports.
Newsom said today the state is having “advanced conversations” with Major League Baseball and local health authorities around California, and he expressed confidence that if COVID-19 trends continue downward, fans will be back in the seats of outdoor stadiums when baseball season begins.
“We will socialize those conversations very, very shortly, we’re working on the final details,” Newsom said.
“We’ve been working very closely with Major League Baseball, others across the spectrum, working with local health officers, and we’ll be updating those guidelines as well.’”
He noted the downward trend of COVID-19 testing-positivity rates, along with a 43% drop in hospitalizations due to COVID over the past two weeks and a 42% drop in ICU hospitalizations.
“We are stabilizing,” Newsom said.
Newsom didn’t offer any details on the nature of conversations regarding a return to sports attendance, only indicating that an announcement was forthcoming.
City News Service and reporter Kelly Puente contributed to this report.