More Vaccine Details Revealed, Cottage Halves Elective Surgeries
3,900 Pfizer Vaccine Doses Due December 18
In the 14 days since Public Health’s previous Friday press conference, five people in Santa Barbara County died of COVID; 1,078 more were found to be infected; and 413 are actively sick today compared to 313 on November 20. The steadily rising number of cases caused Cottage Health to announce today it would reduce by half the elective surgeries that require an overnight stay at the hospital in Santa Barbara. But its frontline coronavirus staff will be among the first to receive the vaccine, the county health officer confirmed.
If all goes according to plan, said Dr. Henning Ansorg, 3,900 doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be arriving around December 18 to all hospitals in the county and to the Public Health department. Frontline health-care workers would be the first to receive the drug. Next in line are first responders and then elderly residents of nursing homes who are at highest risk of severe disease if they should catch the virus. Equity in the distribution was factored into the county’s planning, he said.
Ansorg added that the Moderna vaccine was expected to receive an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration about 10 days after Pfizer’s. Previously, officials had stated the county had about 20,000 health-care workers and about 2,000 first responders.
