THE County of San Diego an-nounced on Wednesday, Febru-ary 24 that COVID-19 vaccina-tions will open Saturday, Feb. 27, to people who work in emergen-cy services, child care and edu-cation, and food and agriculture (including grocery stores).Currently, health care person-nel, long-term care facility staff and residents, and those who are 65 years and older are eligible for vaccines.The County decided to open the vaccines to more people in Phase 1B, Tier 1 as vaccine sup-plies increase and more progress is made in vaccinating those cur-rently eligible.
Three agencies will take the lead in vaccinating some of the newly eligible groups.The San Diego County Office of Education and the California Schools VEBA will exclusive-ly schedule appointments for transitional kindergarten (TK) through 12thgrade teachers and staff through vebavaccinates.com. The priority will be schools open and planning to open, and then those closed, starting with those in the fourth quartile of the California Healthy Places In-dex (HPI).
“The state called for setting aside 10% of vaccine supply for education but the County of San Diego is going further,” said County Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten. “We are setting aside 20% to get teachers back in schools.”Appointments exclusive to the law enforcement community will be organized by Scripps Health.For farm workers in fields and rural locations, CAL FIRE and Operation Collaboration will take the lead in scheduling remote vaccination events.All others eligible in these groups can sign up for appoint-ments through vaccination-superstationsd.com. However, patience is advised as the newly opened tier includes half a mil-lion people. Not everyone will be able to get an immediate ap-pointment, but more time slots will open as additional vaccines arrive.
People with underlying condi-tions can begin signing up for vaccinations on March 15.To date, over 828,000 COVID-19 doses have been delivered to the region with more than 777,000 administered. The differ-ence between the two numbers represents approximately what is expected to be administered the next seven days and doses still to be entered in the record system. More than 6,200 doses were administered and pending documentation.Those vaccinated to date in-clude more than 196,000 San Di-egans who are fully vaccinated, while 19.6% of the population over age 16 has received at least one dose.More information about vac-cine distribution can be found on the County’s vaccination dash-board at https://sdcounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/
State metrics
• San Diego County’s state-calculated, adjusted case rate is currently 15 cases per 100,000 residents (as of Feb. 23) and the region is in Purple Tier or Tier 1.
• The testing positivity per-centage is 5%, placing the County in Tier 2 or the Red Tier. While the testing positivity rate for the County qualifies it for the Red Tier, the state uses the most restrictive metric – in this case the adjusted case rate – and as-signs counties to that tier. There-fore, the County remains in the Purple Tier or Tier 1.
• The County’s health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the low-est healthy conditions, is 7.4% and is in the Red Tier or Tier 2. This metric does not move coun-ties to more restrictive tiers but is required to advance to a less restrictive tier.
• The California Department of Public Health assesses coun-ties on a weekly basis. The next report is scheduled for Tuesday, March. 2.More detailed data summa-ries can be found on the Coun-ty’s coronavirus-sd.com web-site which are updated daily.
(Tracy DeFore/County of San Diego Communications Office)
