California will begin setting aside 40 percent of all vaccine doses for the state's most vulnerable neighborhoods.
State officials say it they hope to inoculate the people most at risk for the coronavirus more quickly and correct inequalities in access to the vaccine.
“To ensure that those who are willing and able, eligible for vaccines have seamless access to vaccination with the goal of getting the penetration of vaccine at least as high in those communities as any other," said state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.
The doses would be spread out among 400 zip codes at the bottom of the state’s Healthy Places Index, which measures factors including income, housing status, education and access to healthcare services.
Currently these communities are receiving about 17 percent of the state's vaccine supply.
“To double the vaccine allotment to the hardest hit communities, having twice as much go to these lower quartile Healthy Places Index communities as part of our vaccine equity metric," is the goal of the policy, said Dr. Ghaly.
Nearly eight million people would benefit.
Dr. Ghaly did concede that unless the overall supply of vaccines to California increases, this will impact the flow of vaccines into more affluent counties.
The bottom 25 percent of communities on the state’s socioeconomic ladder make up 40 percent of the state’s virus cases and represent areas where more essential workers live.
It includes communities like Southeast San Francisco, Richmond and East Oakland.
That's where Oakland city councilman Noel Gallo has been working to get people over their initial fear of the vaccine. He said in his heavily Latino Fruitvale District, the neighborhood clinics have been busy.
"We’ve kinda gotten over the fear. Reality is that mom and grandpa and grandma are passing away. I’ve got volunteers that have lost a father and mother,” said Gallo. “So the message is very clear, forget what you’re thinking about but you gotta come get the vaccine. And people are lined up."
While the Healthy Places Index does not consider race as a factor, more Black, Latino and Asian-Pacific Islander communities do live in these areas, so the shift is expected to also address the racial disparities in vaccinations.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Latinos make up about 39 percent of the state’s population and Blacks about six percent. But state data shows that Latinos have received just 17 percent of the vaccines, and Black people have received just 2.9 percent.
There has also been a push to make vaccines more convenient to get.
Over the weekend, mobile clinics in East Oakland at churches and places of worship worked so well that they gave out more than double the expected amount of shots.
State officials said that once two million doses have been given out in these designated neighborhoods, they will loosen the requirements to move from the purple tier to red. The current tally is at about 1.6 million doses, so they anticipate it will take another week or two to give out 400,000 more.
“So as we go forward we’ll be able to allow more activities, particularly outdoors," said Dee Dee Meyers, a senior advisor to Gov. Newsom. "Although there won’t be huge changes to the blueprint right away. There will be ongoing changes as the situation improves.”
The idea is that as vaccinations increase, it will reduce a community's overall risk.
“(It) will give us a chance to start to open those businesses cautiously, allow for more economic opportunity, bring people back to work with safety as the North Star,” said Meyers.
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