SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — At the current rate Sacramento County is receiving doses, fewer than one in ten unvaccinated adults would be able to get a shot by May 1, the date when the Biden administration plans to make the vaccine available to all.
As of mid-March, more than 200,000 people in the county had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, leaving about one million unvaccinated adults according to US Census population figures.
Health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye says Sacramento County is receiving about 15,000 doses per week, which means only 90,000 doses would arrive by May.
The new Johnson & Johnson vaccine is seen by public health experts as key to helping fill the gap. The vaccine doesn’t require the same super-cold storage that the Moderna and Pfizer versions do and it can be administered in one dose.
But there’s a more fundamental reason the new shot is getting attention.
“It’s another pipeline of vaccines,” said Alonzo Plough, a former Los Angeles County health official who serves as chief science officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “It’s another lane opened up in your grocery store so you can check out faster.”
Sacramento County received its first shipment of the new vaccine last week with 5,000 doses. A one-third increase to the weekly supply would be a big help if Johnson & Johnson can keep the shipments coming.
So far, that hasn’t happened.
“We will not get [an allocation] this week or the week after, but we’re hoping that starting in April, we will get a steady supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” Dr. Kasirye said.
The company recently partnered with competitor pharmaceutical company Merck, which abandoned its own vaccine development when its version proved less effective than others.
Merck expects to be able to deliver doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine later in the year, helped by federal money paid to expand its production ability.
Despite the May 1 target for general vaccine eligibility, wait times could vary by area to actually receive doses. Supplies may still be too short to give people a choice in which brand of vaccine they get.
Johnson & Johnson’s shot had lower effectiveness than the others at preventing COVID cases, but clinical trials still showed a 100% effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and deaths.
“We’re in the realm of the extremely effective to the extremely super effective,” Plough said, urging people to get whatever vaccine they can obtain first.
