SAN DIEGO — Governor Gavin Newsom says earmarking 40% of vaccine does to vulnerable areas could speed reopening. It's all in an effort to inoculate people most at risk from getting COVID-19. The most vulnerable areas are based on household income, education level and housing status. The governor says targeting the vaccine doses strategically will help to reduce transmission of the virus.
The governor gave one on one interviews to a handful of reporters and spoke to News 8’s Marella Lee.
“San Diegans want to know when we will fall out of that purple tier and get into the red tier?” asked Lee.
“I anticipated all things being equal. Look, we're down to 2.1 percent positivity. It's among the lowest positivity rate in America. Just consider states like Texas five times higher positivity rate than the state of California,” said Newsom.
The governor says California has reached 10 million vaccine doses which no other state in the country has done. The state has been using a four tier color coded system to guide schools and businesses when they can re-open. Right now a county can move from the most restrictive purple tier to the red tier when it passes several metrics, including seven or fewer daily new infections per 100,000 residents.
Once the state distributes two million vaccine doses to the most vulnerable areas of the state, the state will modify the metric to 10 new cases or fewer per 100,000 residents.
“We are just a number of months away from having mass vaccination available to anyone who wants it on demand. And once we get there, we'll get the herd immunity. We'll get this economy going again. It will come roaring back,” said Newsom.
Newsom cautioned Californians to continue to be cautious and although county officials say San Diego is headed in the right direction, they’re still figuring out what the adjusted tier guidelines mean.
The county is most concerned about vaccine supply shortages of Moderna and Pfizer.
“It's an issue of manufactured supply, the state of California doesn't have one dose, one vaccine and a refrigerator or a warehouse or storage facility, and the reality is we are constrained only by supply,” said Newsom.