California’s first 327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive by Dec. 15 says Gov. Newsom, assuming the vaccine receives FDA approval.
That batch will go towards inoculating the first wave of frontline healthcare workers. The vaccine requires two shots, and a second shipment is expected to arrive in early January.
But who gets access to the vaccine after that is still an open question.
“For example, do you give priority to low wage workers who have to be delivering our food and running our public transit and things like that? Do you prioritize older people with underlying conditions ahead of them?” said Dr. Art. Reingold, a UC Berkeley epidemiologist who chairs the governor’s COVID-19 safety review panel and was on a national panel that developed distribution guidelines.
While there is broad consensus that healthcare workers should be at the top of the list, we may see variation from state to state over who gets the vaccine next.
In California, there is a strong emphasis on vaccinating teachers so that public schools can reopen.
“School teachers can feel safer working and being in school teaching our kids if they’ve been vaccinated,” said Dr. Reingold. “But do they belong at the top of the list? Do they belong on the second tier compared to let’s say, people who deliver our groceries or work on BART?”
Those are questions the state will answer over the next couple days, Newsom said Monday that the state will release detailed guidelines this week.
Members of the general public will almost certainly be at the bottom of the list, which means no access to the vaccine until likely late spring or early summer.