MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County last week received its initial supplies of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination, a total of 2,925 doses, and expects this week to receive its 4,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
Mee Memorial Healthcare System has been allocated 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine, while the county’s other three hospitals will each receive 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 1,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
“These first distributions should provide each of our four hospitals vaccine in quantities sufficient to offer it to their highest risk staff and also their moderate risk staff,” said Dr. Edward Moreno, Monterey County’s health officer, during a press briefing Dec. 16.
On Tuesday, Mee Memorial began its first round of Covid-19 vaccinations. Dr. Joshua Deutsch, family medicine specialist at the Greenfield Clinic, was the first physician on Mee Memorial’s medical team to receive the Moderna vaccine in King City.
“We sincerely hope that this vaccine helps put an end to the sickness, the dying, the fear and the isolation. Let’s take this step forward together,” said Deutsch, following the vaccination.
According to Moreno, the allocations will coincide with a vaccination priority schedule that will operate in phases based on risk of exposure to Covid-19 and risk of severe health consequences, before offering doses to the general public.
He said the first round would go to “primarily health care personnel who have direct potential for exposure to Covid-19 and long-term care facility residents and staff.”
Plans for the next vaccination phase are in the works and being reviewed by the federal government as of Dec. 20.
The next phase will include essential workers, such as those in education, food service, agriculture, utilities and transportation. Beyond that, the next phase out would include adults with high-risk medical conditions and adults 65 years of age and older.
Those three steps are considered 1A, 1B and 1C in the government’s Phase 1 plans for vaccine distribution.
“There’s quite a bit going on in terms of reviewing the vaccine, safety of the vaccine, recommendations for the vaccine and who should receive the vaccine,” Moreno said. “They also included that equity has been considered in the clinical trials and urges that the leaders and the distribution continue to use some equity guiding principals in immunization, monitoring and communication of the vaccine.”
Such equity procedures would consider ethnicity as a factor for vaccine priority.
People who get the vaccine will receive a fact sheet with information about Covid-19 and the vaccine itself and potential side effects.
“There are some side effects of the vaccine that have been identified in the trials,” Moreno said. “The most common side effect is pain where the injection occurred. People also complain of fatigue or tiredness, headache and muscle pain. Those are more common side effects of people experienced after receiving the vaccine, and usually it’s within the first couple of days, and for the most part last about a day or so.”
He noted other, less common complaints include chills, joint pain, fever and nausea.
“Those side effects are included in the information sheet that will be provided to individuals so they know what to watch for in the few days following their vaccination,” Moreno said.
In addition, patients are recommended to download a national health checker smart phone app, called V-Safe, in which they can report symptoms and side effects and receive reminders for their second vaccine dose.
“People can opt into this voluntarily to tell CDC of any side effects, which is important for the manufacturer and the CDC to know whether or not the side effects continue to be acceptable and whether the benefits outweigh the risks and side effects,” Moreno said. “There are some side effects that were under reported and have become more of a concern.”
The state’s total allocation of the first vaccine shipments were 327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 498,900 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
There is no definitive timeline for when the next phases of vaccines will occur or when they will be made available to the general public.
