–On Friday at 1 p.m., the County of San Luis Obispo Public Health Department will share brief remarks on the COVID-19 vaccine’s impact for SLO County residents, administer the health department’s first five doses of COVID-19 vaccine to health care workers, and then answer questions.
Earlier this week in South County, Marian Regional Medical Center frontline health care staff and physicians were among the first on the Central Coast to receive the vaccine.
The first dose of the two-dose vaccine was administered to high-risk health care staff Thursday. In total, several hundred Dignity Health Central Coast employees are scheduled to receive this first round. Two doses of the vaccine in persons aged 16 years and older are necessary for the vaccine to be effective.
As Santa Barbara County and the state experience a surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations this winter, leaders at local hospitals are gaining a clearer understanding of the virus and what contributes to severity of the disease as they prepare for the arrival of vaccines.Â
At Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, which maintains substantial ICU capacity and personal protective equipment for the time being, staff expect to receive approximately 1,900 doses from Pfizer to begin vaccinating the first round of Marian s 3,200 health care workers next week.Â
To discuss the vaccine process, ICU capacity and what doctors are learning about local COVID-19 patients, the Santa Maria Times spoke with top medical officials from Marian Regional, who also work for neighboring Dignity Health sites French Hospital Medical Center and Arroyo Grande Community Hospital.Â
I know you thought you lived on the
Central Coast, that magical place between hella-cold
NorCal and dank-ass
Gov. Gavin Newsom,
LA, Orange, Riverside, Imperial, Inyo, Mono, San Bernardino, and
San Diego
counties. My whole worldview is shattered. I hate SoCal! The traffic, the trendiness, the air quality, the traffic . did I mention the traffic? click to enlarge Yet here we are, again in the
purple tier, locked down and shuttered. Why? Because Newsom included us in the numbers from what I consider the actual SoCal region, whose ICU bed availability is stretched to the breaking point while here in SLO County we re still in pretty good shape. Newsom s trigger for the lockdown is when a region has less that 15 percent of ICU bed availability, and though those numbers are fluid, by some calculations, SLO County has nearly 50 percent availability!