Health care providers have offered to take SCMA vaccine clinics under their wings as state moves to have Blue Shield handle distribution. | Stock Photo
Health care providers have offered to take SCMA vaccine clinics under their wings as state moves to have Blue Shield handle distribution. | Stock Photo
Sonoma County health officials are "thrilled" to already be months into vaccine distribution, when at the start of the pandemic one year ago experts had predicted we'd still be waiting another six months before one was approved.
Wendy Young, Sonoma County Medical Association executive director, believes how fast vaccines were created could have a lot to do with the "rockiness" of the vaccine distribution roll out, but other factors could also be to blame such as the vaccine supply.
The Sonoma County Medical Association (SCMA) currently has four vaccine clinics set up at the Grace Pavilion at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. Currently, the nonprofit organization is inoculating 600 people each day the clinic is held. Young said if they had enough supply, their volunteers could be vaccinating more than a thousand people each day.
"We have the capacity and the infrastructure, we just need the state to give us the allocations," Young told KSRO.
However, SCMA worried their nonprofit volunteer run vaccine clinics would be in jeopardy when the state assigned Blue Shield to take over vaccine distribution. The move required vaccine clinics to operate under a health care provider. Young said providers in the area have offered to take the SCMA clinics under their wings so they could keep hosting the clinics.
"We were not ready to stop serving our community," Young told KSRO. "So, to have so many providers willing to reach out to us to say 'No, you're gonna keep doing what you're doing, we're going to put you under our provider umbrella,' that just has made us all very happy."
Young said the clinics will need volunteers and donations to keep going. Volunteer vaccinators will need to fill out a Google survey after emailing volunteer@scma.org. They'll need to complete training and also sign up for the Medical Reserve Corps. Donations can be made to an account set up at Exchange Bank. The money is put towards supplying Personal Protective Equipment and food for the volunteers at the clinic.
"The community has rallied around this clinic so much and supported us so strongly, we really see ourselves as the community clinic," Young said.
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