SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — The Del Mar Fairgrounds super station site will be closed this Friday, March 12 through Sunday, March 14 due to a low number of COVID-19 vaccine doses that were delivered to Scripps for the week. The station will reopen next Monday, March 15.
Patients who had appointments on one of those three closed days are being rescheduled for either Thursday, March 11, or early next week automatically through the state’s MyTurn online appointment system.
In addition to closing the site Friday through Sunday, a small number of appointments at that site on Wednesday will be rescheduled to Thursday because of a programing error on the MyTurn system, which offered 1,800 more appointment slots for those two days than actual vaccine doses received.
Patients with second dose appointments will be rescheduled from Friday, Saturday and Sunday to Monday, March 15, as the county and state were unable to provide Scripps with additional doses to make up for the programming error.
Scripps said it's still waiting for the MyTurn system to notify patients of these changes.
The issues at the Del Mar site are just the latest in the county's ongoing COVID-19 vaccine supply problem. Previous shortages have closed the UC San Diego Health-run Petco Park vaccination super station multiple times.
However, the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrived in the region Monday and is being distributed the same way as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The latest COVID-19 vaccine is 72% effective in research trials in the United States, compared to about 94% for Moderna and 95% for Pfizer after those vaccines' required two doses.
However, San Diego County public health officials say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is just as effective as its counterparts at preventing serious illness from COVID-19 and has been tested against virus variants. All currently available vaccines were 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths during trials, officials said.
"San Diegans should get whichever vaccine is available when it's their turn to get vaccinated," said Dr. Wilma Wooten, county public health officer. "All three vaccines are excellent at preventing people from getting seriously ill from COVID-19."
As of Tuesday, more than 1.15 million vaccine doses have been delivered to the region, and over 1 million have been logged as administered. Of those vaccinated to date, nearly 342,000 people, or 12.7% of San Diegans 16 and older, are fully immunized.
More than 643,000 county residents -- or 23.9% -- have received at least one shot of two-dose vaccine.
San Diego County public health officials have reported 307 new COVID-19 infections, as the county remains in the most restrictive, purple, tier, but just barely. The county's state-calculated, adjusted case rate is currently 10.8 cases per 100,000 residents. It needs to be below seven per 100,000 to head into the red tier.
The testing positivity percentage is 4.2%, placing the county in the orange tier. While the testing positivity rate for the county qualifies it for orange, the state uses the most restrictive metric -- in this case the adjusted case rate -- and assigns counties to that tier. The county's health equity metric, which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the lowest healthy conditions, is 6% and is in the red tier.
The California Department of Public Health assesses counties on a weekly basis. The next report is scheduled for Tuesday.
