Sacramento (CA) Firefighters Get Inoculated

Tony Bizjak The Sacramento Bee (MCT) Sacramento’s COVID-19 vaccine program took a notable step forward this week, expanding to include shots for thousands of firefighters and paramedics, the emergency first-responders who treat and transport the most seriously ill COVID-19 patients. The new group represents the third major at-risk cohort being offered access to the shots, following several weeks of shots for hospital workers, including doctors and nurses, and more recently, the first inoculations for residents and staffers of skilled nursing facilities. Faced with delays in the first weeks, health officials say they are trying to ramp up vaccinations, although the number of doses available on a weekly basis remains limited. Sacramento County Health Department immunization manager Rachel Allen said the county is attempting to move forward to new recipient groups before finishing existing groups, essentially overlapping groups as a way of moving more quickly, and using all doses in each vaccine vial once it is opened. “We don’t want to delay,” Allen said at a public forum Thursday evening. “We don’t want vaccines to be wasted.” The California Department of Public Health on Thursday advised local leaders to speed up shot-giving and minimize the potential for dosage waste by immediately giving vaccines “to individuals in all tiers of Phase 1a.” That includes community health car...
Source: JEMS Latest News - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Coronavirus News News Feed California Medicine Source Type: news