Contra Costa County is expanding COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to residents ages 50 and older who live or work in the county, health officials announced on Monday.
"We look forward to the coming months when we can do away with vaccine eligibility, when anyone and everyone is eligible," said Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors Chair Diane Burgis. "More and more doses of vaccine are coming into the county each week and we expect that trend to continue."
The expanded eligibility impacts an estimated 235,000 county residents.
According to county officials, more than 336,000 Contra Costa County residents have already gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The county plans to further expand eligibility to others when vaccine supply increases more.
"We are making good progress vaccinating those in the groups already eligible and will now continue to prioritize more of the most vulnerable groups in our community," said Contra Costa County Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano.
The move, which applies regardless of whether the individual receiving the vaccine has an underlying health condition, follows a similar move by Solano County health officials last week. However, that county on Monday urged the California Department of Public Health to allocate more COVID-19 vaccine "after experiencing a steep decline."
Over the past two weeks, Solano County's vaccine allocation from the state has been the third lowest per 1,000 residents of all 58 counties in the state. While Solano County has already administered 134,000 vaccines to date, the new allocations of available doses have dropped by 60%.
Because of that, county officials have had to temporarily suspend scheduling at many first-dose mass vaccination clinics. They had previously attributed their ability to open up vaccines to residents ages 50 and older to an excess of unbooked appointments.
Last Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom projected that all adults in California would be vaccine eligible within 5 1/2 weeks, meaning the state could be doing away with its tiered vaccine eligibility system by late April or early May.
State health officials and third partner Blue Shield of California believe they're due for an influx of COVID-19 vaccine doses as the recently-approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine comes into the market at a faster rate.
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