Stanford Health Care is canceling more than 6,000 coronavirus vaccine appointments in Santa Clara and Alameda Counties because of a vaccine shortage.
“We learned we would be getting less vaccine than we anticipated so it led us to make a very difficult decision to postpone the first dose appointments,” said Dr. Niraj Sehgal, chief medical officer of Stanford Health Care.
Many of the 6,700 appointments were scheduled for next week at the Arrillaga Center at Stanford and at the South County Cancer Center in San Jose.
“At our Santa Clara County sites we try to reschedule 20 days out and we’re hoping by then we will have more stable vaccine supply,” said Sehgal.
These are just the latest in a string of supply shortage cancelation. Recently, Sutter Health was forced to reschedule more than 20,000 appointments for second COVID-19 shots earlier this month because of a shortage of vaccines.
Santa Clara County and San Francisco have had issues as well. But Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Division of Infectious Diseases, said vaccine supply should improve next month.
“I anticipate improvement week after week. We will have more doses from Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna and Pfizer or ramping up their production,” he said. “In addition, AstraZeneca is expected to get U.S. emergency authorization.”
Creating a big boost to vaccine supply and hopefully an end to mass cancelations.
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Source: NBC Bay Area
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