Can California’s vaccine supply and technology keep up as millions become eligible?

The expansion of COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to everyone age 50 and older will be the biggest test yet for California’s vaccine effort, which has stabilized recently but still faces questions about whether supply and appointments can keep pace with demand.

Millions more Californians qualify for a shot starting Thursday, and in two weeks, all residents 16 and older will be eligible.

For most people, actually getting a dose will involve wading into California’s vast array of appointment websites run by local health departments, private health providers and clinics, several major pharmacy chains and the state, through a portal called My Turn.

Public health officials are urging newly eligible people to be patient while searching for an appointment because the supply of vaccine doses coming from the federal government is still constrained in some places. Officials in several major counties have said they could vaccinate far more people if they received more supplies.

Across the state, more than 30% of residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, totaling more than 18 million doses.

State and local officials have continued to prioritize equity in the vaccine distribution — a key to the state’s reopening plan — but ongoing constraints in supply could further hinder those efforts to reach the hardest-hit communities.

Officials in both Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties have warned that while demand increases, supply has remained limited.

Going forward, Santa Cruz County Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel has said officials expect a “very slow increase” in vaccine supply through April, with a substantial increase in May. But, “there is no way we’ll be able to meet demand during the month of April with these new windows of opportunity opening,” Newel said, referring to the new age eligibility standards.

“We’ve had scarcity of vaccine and that continues,” Santa Clara County COVID-19 testing and vaccine officer Dr. Marty Fenstershieb said earlier this week.

The tight supplies are also translating to difficulty securing appointments, many Californians said.

My Turn, the state’s online appointment hub, was prone to glitches at the start of the vaccine rollout. To date, 2 million of the state’s 18 million administered doses have been booked through the site.

The issues have mostly improved as vaccine supply and appointment availability have increased. But in addition to the state site, a patchwork of websites operated by local health departments, private health providers and several major pharmacies have sprung up to meet growing demand. Some counties — and residents — have abandoned the platform altogether.

Billed as a one-stop shop for an appointment, My Turn does not include slots from many of the state’s biggest providers, including health chains such as Kaiser Permanente, retail pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, third-party providers such as Carbon Health in Los Angeles and Othena in Orange County, and smaller clinics that operate on a platform called CalVax.

To address problems with My Turn, the state allowed residents to sign up for an appointment at least one day before the expansion. That change was in order to prevent sign-up snags that occurred on March 15, when nearly 5 million more residents became eligible in the state and rushed to find an appointment.

Despite the modification, appointments have still been difficult to obtain. Several residents on a popular vaccine appointment group on Facebook said the site locked them out of first-dose appointments because there were no available openings for second-dose appointments further down the line. Others said not every vaccine site comes up in a given ZIP Code, and recommended typing in a list of 10 different cities so as not to miss a location.

After some difficulty, Orange County resident David Chang, 52, said he was able to use My Turn to secure an appointment at the East Valley Community Health Clinic, but noted that the site wasn’t user-friendly.

“You have to answer all the eligibility questions each time before getting to the scheduling page, only to find out that no openings are available,” he said.

As with earlier stages of the vaccine rollout, Californians have also been confused about varying eligibility across the state, and about whether and when it’s acceptable to cross county lines for a dose.

A handful of counties have already expanded eligibility prior to the state guidance. In Contra Costa, for example, officials announced Tuesday that all residents 16 and older were eligible for the vaccine after roughly 44% of the county has received at least one dose. The newly eligible group was directed to a county-run website to schedule appointments, since the county clinics were not currently set up on My Turn.

So far, the California Department of Public Health has reported that about 24% of the state’s vaccine supply — or roughly 4.3 million doses — has gone to those ages 50 to 64, either because they were already included in various eligible categories or they live in counties that have already expanded eligibility beyond the state guidance.

On Wednesday, Ferrer said that despite known issues, the county was “excited to expand eligibility” to more people.

“We do ask both those currently eligible and those that will be newly eligible to be patient as supply increases,” she said.

LA Times staff writers Luke Money and Maloy Moore contributed to this report, as did Lookout staff.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times, a Lookout content partner.

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