- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
State to dedicate 40 percent of vaccine supply to low-income communities
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – State officials said Wednesday night that they are taking a new approach to vaccinating the state’s residents against COVID-19, placing focus on low income areas that could include Lake County.
Officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration said they are unveiling a vaccination plan focusing on equity, specifically, addressing the state’s lowest-income communities.
The state now intends to focus 40 percent of the vaccine supply in lower income and lower quartile communities, which include 400 zip codes where an estimated eight million Californians live.
That’s because state health officials have found that more than 40 percent of California’s disease burden – cases and deaths – have been shouldered by those living in the lowest quartiles in the California Healthy Places Index.
The index considers 25 community characteristics – among them, housing, education, economics and social factors – and creates a single score to help assess the health and well-being of each neighborhood in California, with the lowest scores in dark blue and the highest in dark green.
This new change in vaccination focus could prove particularly important to Lake County, a large portion of which the California Healthy Places Index shows is in the bottom quartile and among the lowest-ranked areas of the state.
The areas of Lake County ranked in the lowest quartile and marked out in dark blue stretch from the top of the county, north of Upper Lake, to west of Lakeport and east along the Northshore, including the communities of Nice, Lucerne and Clearlake Oaks, and down to the Clearlake area.
Lake County Public Health’s demographics breakdown shows that District 2, which includes most of the city of Clearlake and areas east, has consistently had the most cases, but it’s also a major population center in the county.
It’s followed by areas that rank higher in the Healthy Places Index: District 4, which includes Lakeport, and District 5, which includes the greater Kelseyville and Cobb areas.
District 3, which includes the Northshore communities that also have a low index ranking, is ranked fourth for case numbers and District 1, which includes portions of Clear Lake, Lower Lake, Anderson Springs, Hidden Valley Lake and Middletown, has the county’s lowest case numbers and the county’s best index ranking.
As of Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health said that 13,845 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Lake County, which has more than 64,000 residents and to date has had more than 3,100 cases and 41 deaths.
Focused vaccinations to be followed by tier adjustments
Over the next few weeks, the state will be focused on distributing the vaccines to two million residents in the 400 zip codes identified as being the state’s lowest-income communities. As of Wednesday night, those specific zip codes had not yet been released to the public.
Once they hit that threshold, the state will adjust the case rate threshold upward for the red tier on the Blueprint for a Safer Economy from seven to 10 cases per 100,000 people, which is expected to allow areas to drop out of the purple tier, which is the most restrictive on the blueprint.
Lake County remained in the purple tier this week, with its daily case rate at 11 per 100,000, down from 15 per 100,000 last week, according to the county’s epidemiologist, Sarah Marikos.
When the state hits the four million dose threshold, the numbers for the orange and yellow tiers also will be adjusted, officials said.
Additional information on the plan is expected over the next few days.
Administration officials also emphasized that they are in no way planning to abandon safety measures implemented in California during the pandemic, and are in fact doubling down and continuing with them.
On Thursday clearer guidance will be released on the critical role masks play in curbing COVID-19 transmission. Testing capacity also will remain a focus.
Even with proposed changes coming for the state’s tiers, officials said California will still maintain some of the strongest public health protections in the nation through its Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
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