It has arrived: California has received its first shipment of Pfizer's virus vaccine. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) tweeted a picture of the Fed Ex plane arriving Sunday night.
Northern California is still waiting on its delivery into Oakland International Airport and at the Coast Guard Island in Alameda, which is one of 16 military sites to get the vaccine. 44,000 doses are expected to be held in cold storage there, but only for military use.
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) health officials expect 975 doses on Monday or Tuesday, which would mean vaccinations could begin by Wednesday morning. But Chief Pharmacy Executive Dr. Desi Kotis told KCBS Radio that there are some 20,000 people in their system that need vaccinations, including frontline healthcare workers and researchers who are working with the virus, students and the campus police force.
Kotis said that UCSF is staggering vaccinations, only giving it to a third of the doctors or nurses at a time.
“We wouldn’t, for example, in the medical ICU take all of the nurses and vaccinate them on the same day,” she said. “We would stagger them by a few days because high fever is one of the side effects, headache, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea.”
Kotis added that the symptoms of the vaccine are “nothing acetaminophen, an aspirin or an ibuprofen wouldn’t cure,” but the staggering will help in case people are forced to take a day off.
UCSF hopes to have all of its high-risk workforce vaccinated by this time next month, and has also agreed to vaccinate people with no campus or hospital affiliation, which may not happen until next spring.