Mass vaccines still months away despite promising new COVID data from Pfizer, Gov. Gavin Newsom says

Californians shouldn’t get their hopes up about getting a coronavirus vaccine this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, cautioning that even once a vaccine is approved, mass availability will still be months away.

He made the remarks during a press conference the same day pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced early data shows its COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective.

Newsom said he’s worried people see the data as a sign they can go back to their normal lives and will flout coronavirus restrictions aimed at preventing spread of the virus.

“A vaccine is on the way. That’s good news. But the availability to you and me and others outside our first responders, outside our health care professionals is many many months off,” he said. “What a mistake it would be to read these headlines and then walk away from all the extraordinary progress you and others have made to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe.”

Even if a coronavirus vaccine is approved this year, the general public won’t be able to access it until next year, Newsom has said. The first doses that reach California will be used for health care workers treating coronavirus patients, according to the state’s draft vaccine distribution plan.

On Monday, Newsom said the first doses available of the Pfizer vaccine, which has yet to be approved by the federal government, likely won’t be enough to inoculate all the health care workers the state aims to prioritize.

Newsom said the projections for availability haven’t changed. Newsom has said he anticipates only about 1.5 million Californians could be vaccinated this year, even if a vaccine is approved quickly. Roughly 40 million people live in California.

“We won’t even be able to cover all our health care workers,” he said.

After health care workers, other essential workers and people who are at high risk of dying of the coronavirus would be next in line, according to a draft distribution plan California officials released last month.

The Pfizer vaccine must be stored in ultra-cold temperatures and delivered in two separate doses spaced out over weeks. To immunize the population on a broad scale, California is working to increase cold storage capacity and ensure its public health databases can handle a huge volume of information about who is vaccinated and when.

The state also needs to stock up on necessary medical supplies, including dry ice, syringes and alcohol, before it can successfully distribute vaccines at scale.

In the meantime, coronavirus case rates in California are ticking up. About 3.7% of coronavirus tests have come back positive over the last two weeks in the state. After weeks in September and October when the state’s average rate of new cases per day hovered just over 3,000, the number has increased to more than 5,000 in recent days.

This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 2:28 PM with the headline "Mass vaccines still months away despite promising new COVID data from Pfizer, Gov. Gavin Newsom says."