County officials today expressed frustration with a scattered vaccine distribution process which gives the county limited oversight over distribution within its bounds.

Currently, all healthcare workers and residents over the age of 75 are eligible for vaccination. State guidance puts residents over age 65 in the eligible bracket, but as it stands, a majority of providers in the county do not have the resources to expand beyond the 75-and-up range.

The Kaiser Permanente system, however, is in fact vaccinating the age 65 bracket.

Further complicating matters, the CVS-Walgreens partnership — responsible for vaccinating older residents in long-term care facilities — receives doses directly from the federal government.

Multi-county entities like Kaiser and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation — which serve a vast majority of the county population — get their shipments through state allocation.

The county has no oversight over either distribution lane.

“We recognize we’re in an environment of changing federal and state information daily,” said County Counsel James Williams at a press conference. “It’s extraordinarily frustrating for us here locally.”

Williams bemoaned a “distracted” federal government, citing the Trump administration’s focus on bogus claims of election fraud, rather than the “raging” pandemic.

“We learned a few days ago that the federal government was going to release stockpiles of vaccines that were being held for second doses,” he said. “We learned this morning that no such stockpile exists.”

Just this week, Santa Clara County surpassed the 1,000 death mark, currently sitting at 1,028 cumulative deaths since the pandemic arrived a year ago. And, in the midst of the full force of the holiday surge, the county has logged a 10.8% test positivity rate over the past 14 days, spurring an ever-dwindling ICU capacity.

County residents are encouraged to visit sccfreevax.org for more information regarding vaccine eligibility and distribution.