Amid the science and state guidance over who is eligible to receive elusive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, difficult and politically tricky decisions are being made by governments across every jurisdiction in the country.

Navigating these gray areas within the city of Long Beach has led to priorities that in some cases are very different from the county and state.

And while the city has won wide praise and national attention for its aggressive vaccination program, its vaccination decisions also have led to accusations of politicking, favoritism and exclusion of groups who play a big part in the city’s ability to function.

Consider:

• Members of the Long Beach City Council were vaccinated against COVID-19 because they were deemed critical to the continuity of government. But that priority ranking has not been extended to most of their staff members, who handle day-to-day dealings with the public.
• Although key workers in the City Attorney’s office have been offered the vaccine, employees in the City Prosecutor’s office have not been provided the same opportunity.
• Long Beach has now vaccinated every elementary school teacher and staff member in its school district, even though Los Angeles County is waiting to begin that task until March 1.
• Dockworkers at the local ports are now getting a slice of the city’s vaccine allocations because they handle the transport of cargo that contains food and chemicals used in agriculture, but not the truckers, nor the UPS or FedEx drivers, who ferry those same goods to businesses, homes and warehouses across the region.

Bruce Mac Rae, a Long Beach-based regional vice president with UPS, noted the irony that drivers for his company are delivering the vaccine itself to health authorities, yet they are not eligible to receive it.

“We’re the ones delivering food, supplies, the vaccine, PPE—and we’re not essential enough for the vaccine?” he said, adding that “every county and city has their own play of who they want to put in line.”

Ron Herrera, president of the Teamsters Port Division, said given the designation of dockworkers, he would be making an aggressive push to give truck drivers higher priority.

“I’m a little perplexed as to why truck drivers were left out,” he said, noting that the majority of these drivers are Latinos from areas hard hit by the coronavirus.

And Laura Reimer, president of the Long Beach Prosecutors Association, said she is in “constant contact” with city leaders and is pressing them to get more than a dozen people in the local office vaccinated because they are in court amid defendants, judges and court staff every day.

Demand outpaces supply

Officials, including the mayor, say they want to vaccinate everyone, but there simply isn’t enough supply. Figures provided by the city show weekly allotments, shared by more than two dozen other service providers, range from a low of about 3,000 doses in the last week of December to a high of nearly 13,000 doses during the first week of January.

In all, Long Beach has provided more than 100,000 doses over 10 weeks for those who live or work in the city.

“There is not enough vaccine,” Mayor Robert Garcia said in an interview earlier this week. “We need more vaccine for every group.”

In Long Beach, the people making these decisions include Health Director Kelly Colopy; the city’s medical officer, Dr. Anissa Davis; the city’s vaccination coordinator, Sandy Wedgeworth; and other officials from emergency management. At times City Manager Tom Modica and the mayor also weigh in, Colopy said.

The city trusts the health department with these decisions, which rely heavily on science, Modica said. “But we also have to balance what we’re hearing in the community,” he said, adding that he meets twice weekly with a group of department heads for input on COVID-19 response.

The decision-makers must comply with state guidance on groups currently eligible for vaccinations, including health care workers, emergency personnel, seniors over 65, educators and food workers. But, Colopy said, “the state does change who fits into a category fairly frequently.”

Last week, for example, the state clarified that drivers for delivery companies like GrubHub do qualify as food workers. 

And on Feb. 18, the state sent the city a letter stating that dockworkers could qualify for the vaccine as food workers because they handle the transport of food or products used in food production. The city has since set aside 3,000 doses from the state for longshore workers.

Educators, meanwhile, have qualified for the vaccine under the state’s guidelines for more than a month. But given the size of this group—Long Beach Unified alone employs 12,000 people—no other agency was as quick to open eligibility.

The mayor, however, has been a leading advocate around the state that all teachers should be vaccinated before they are asked to return to classrooms. So far more than 11,000 doses have been offered to staff and educators, or about 12% of the city’s total allocation.

Dockworkers and teachers, while deemed by most to be essential workers, are also represented by powerful unions.

Dockworkers, who were previously included in a lower priority category for transportation and logistics workers, handle roughly $400 billion in commerce entering and exiting through both local ports. They are represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which has enormous political power over port operations.

Mario Cordero, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, said the union is not exerting its political clout to get special treatment. He said the threat of COVID-19 on the nation’s supply chain poses a real danger. The union has documented just over 1,200 cases of COVID-19 among longshoremen, which is about 9% of the roughly 13,500 workers on the docks.

Adding to that, Cordero said each time there’s a positive case, other workers have to quarantine to prevent an outbreak, creating huge backlogs at the port. Thirty container ships were waiting to be processed in the Long Beach harbor on Wednesday alone, he said.

Support for vaccinating port workers came in the form of letters to the state from elected leaders, including State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell and Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Gonzalez said in an interview that the change in policy had nothing to do with unions: “It has to do with the fact that they are essential workers. They have been on the frontline since Day One.”

City workers 

Administrators at the Port of Long Beach have also been offered doses, putting them in a small group of city employees to get the vaccine.

Modica, the city manager, devised a list of essential workers to receive the vaccine when it arrived in mid-December. After frontline health workers, he determined which employees were essential for the local government to function in the midst of a pandemic.

“The city employs 6,000 people and the vast majority did not qualify, including many department heads,” he said.

The city offered the vaccine to 1,100 of its workers in January, he said, the majority of them police officers.

Essential health department workers, those working in the emergency operations center, the joint information center, the city attorney and members of the City Council also made the list—though two City Council members qualified because of their age and one was vaccinated by another agency.

Elected leaders in other jurisdictions, including the California Legislature, have not been offered the vaccine unless they qualify in some other way.

Even though council meetings have been virtual for nearly a year, Modica, who also got the vaccine, said he felt it necessary to vaccinate council members because he needs them to authorize or ratify a number of decisions.

“What happens if we don’t have a quorum?” he said. “What happens if four or five of them get sick?”

The city attorney is critical in drafting and reviewing local health orders, legal opinions and enforcement of local laws, the city manager said.

Among those who have not yet made the cut: the city clerk, most of City Auditor Laura Doud’s office and City Prosecutor Doug Haubert’s office, despite the fact that Haubert himself was in court recently on a case against a local restaurant owner who is accused of violating the city’s COVID-19 health orders.

Prosecutors, Modica said, will become eligible as of March 1.

Successes 

Vaccinations for teachers, dockworkers and others have not come at the expense of other groups, officials said.

The city late Friday released data on a new dashboard that shows they’ve provided the vaccine to more seniors and residents than many other jurisdictions in the region: So far 66,553 residents in the city have received at least one dose, about 14.5% of the city, compared to 12% in Los Angeles County and 8.2% in Orange County.

About 60% of Long Beach residents 65 and older have been vaccinated either in Long Beach or another jurisdiction, which is higher than 43% in Los Angeles County and 52.6% in Orange County.

And the city has also made progress in reaching those who live in hard-hit areas and who don’t have the internet savvy or resources to book appointments.

The city plans to hold a “super-sized” clinic for 3,000 food workers this week.

Modica and other decision-makers said they’ve done the best they can to navigate competing interests and concerns, with Colopy emphasizing that those at highest risk have been prioritized.

“We’re trying to be as data- and science-based as possible,” she said.

Roughly 60% of the city’s seniors have received at least one dose, either through the city or another health provider, officials said.

“We’re proud of what we’ve been able to do,” Modica said.