SAN DIEGO — The limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines will again cause the temporary closure of the UC San Diego run Petco Park vaccination super station. According to Mike Workman, spokesperson for the county, the closure will affect those with appointments on Friday and Saturday. The closure could extend beyond Saturday into Sunday and Monday depending on vaccine arrival.
Other vaccination sites in San Diego County including the super station at San Marcos are offering second doses only. Previously scheduled appointments for firsts will be automatically rescheduled.
The Sharp Chula Vista and Grossmont locations are not currently doing any vaccinations with Moderna but are currently still doing first and second dose Pfizer.
Those with appointments will be rescheduled through UC San Diego's MyChart system and should receive an email. It is recommended that you check the MyChart system to confirm updates and changes to existing appointments.
A delayed shipment of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine forced some vaccination sites to dramatically slow the pace of inoculations or completely reschedule appointments over the past weekend.
The vaccine shortage affected the county's largest vaccination site at Petco Park earlier this week with no vaccinations taking place on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. It was able to reopen Wednesday morning.
San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said Wednesday that a supply-chain issue with vaccines last weekend shows how thin the margins are for delays and mistakes in the system. The winter storm impacting much of the country has also put a damper on some vaccine appointments.
Due to delays in vaccine shipments to San Diego, the county is rescheduling approximately 1,000 first-dose appointments at its sites on Thursday and Friday. Those affected are being notified they will be rescheduled for next week.
Petco Park previous closure Sunday, Monday, Tuesday:
Of 765,500 vaccine doses the county has received, 663,194 have been administered, more than 3,000 are awaiting processing and 98,000 are accounted for by appointments.
"You can see we are running very, very lean," Fletcher said.
The county is reserving a portion of available COVID-19 vaccination appointments each day for a pilot project that aims to equitably distribute the novel coronavirus vaccine.
Scheduling Assistance for Vaccine Equity sets aside appointments for people who are in the currently eligible groups and at high risk for complications from COVID-19.
"We need to make sure that communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 have easier access to the vaccine," said Dr. Wilma Wooten, county public health officer. "This project is making it easier for people who qualify to make appointments and get vaccinated."
The county now has five vaccine super stations and 15 smaller neighborhood distribution sites according to the county Health and Human Services Agency. Despite the supply-chain problems, Fletcher said the county has allocated its vaccines efficiently enough that he believes teachers, food and agriculture workers and law enforcement officers will be able to begin receiving vaccines by as soon as the first week of March.
Additionally, the HHSA anticipates it will complete vaccinations in the county's skilled nursing facilities this week, freeing up mobile teams to provide more shots around the county. In total, around 17.6% of the county's population over the age of 16 have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 5% are fully inoculated.
Wednesday's data increased the number of COVID-19 infections to 254,180 since the pandemic began, while the death toll increased to 3,099.
The 57 deaths -- one of the highest daily death tolls locally -- are a reminder of the deadly seriousness of the pandemic, Fletcher said, but are likely a result of lagging effects from a significant case spike in December and January.
The number of hospitalizations decreased by just four patients to 804, while intensive care patients decreased by 10 to 256 from Tuesday's numbers. There are 57 available, staffed ICU beds in the county.
Of 13,771 tests reported Wednesday, 4% returned positive, bringing the 14-day rolling average of positive tests to 5.5%.
On Tuesday, the county's rate of new cases dropped enough to allow elementary schools to resume in-person instruction for students in pre- kindergarten through sixth grade.
According to the state's weekly COVID-19 update, San Diego County's adjusted case rate is 22.2 cases per 100,000 residents. The state permits elementary schools to reopen as soon as counties reach an adjusted average new daily case rate of 25 per 100,000 residents.
In-person classes cannot resume for seventh though 12th grades until the county's rate of new COVID-19 cases falls to seven per 100,000 residents.
San Diego County's seven-day testing positivity percentage is 6.4%, placing the county in the red tier of the four-tiered state re-opening plan for that metric. The state uses each county's worst metric -- in this case the adjusted case rate -- and assigns counties to that tier.
The county's health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the lowest healthy conditions, is 9.7% and is in the purple tier. This metric does not move counties to more restrictive tiers, but is required to advance to a less restrictive tier.
