San Diego County received nearly 100,000 more vaccines this week than it did the week prior, public health officials announced Wednesday.
This uptick in the vaccine supply is good news for the county, where Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said there hasn’t yet been any waning in interest to receive a shot. The 294,440 vaccine doses the county received last week is the most so far, with 2,583,595 total vaccines received since they were first approved by the FDA.
Fletcher said he was not yet aware of how many doses San Diego County is scheduled to receive next week, nor had the county heard any news about the 11,000 Johnson & Johnson doses it was keeping refrigerated. The federal government put a pause on administration of the J&J vaccine following a few rare blood clots, resulting in the deaths of half a dozen women.
A total of 203 fully vaccinated San Diego County residents have tested positive for the SARS CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19, according to Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the county Health and Human Services Agency’s Epidemiology and Immunization Services Branch. This represents a rate of .027% of all fully vaccinated county residents — a little more than three times higher than the federally reported rate of .008%.
Of these, he said, 57% had no symptoms whatsoever and were tested for another reason. None of the fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized or have died.
“We expected to see higher rates locally,” McDonald said.
More than 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to San Diego County, and 1,316,462 county residents — or around 65% of the county’s goal of 75% of its eligible population — have received at least one dose.
The state’s goal is to vaccinate 75% of people 16 and older to achieve so-called herd immunity — equating to around 2.02 million San Diego County residents.
On Wednesday, the county reported that more than 846,000 people in San Diego County — or around 42% of that goal — are fully vaccinated. The numbers include both county residents and those who only work in the region.
Updated at 7:54 p.m. April 21, 2021
— City News Service contributed to this article