Blue Shield takes over vaccine distribution

Governor Gavin Newsom is partnering with Blue Shield and Kaiser to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. The contract with Blue Shield is now public, and the goal is to administer 3 million doses a week starting next month.

“It centralizes a system that is very fragmented. So you will see a lot of pulling together there and having one entity deciding where the need is, versus it being distributed to counties, and then counties deciding where the need is,” says Melody Gutierrez, state government and politics reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

However, many counties are unhappy about this. Gutierrez talked to Holly Mitchell of the LA County Board of Supervisors on Monday. “She was saying that this is worrisome to her that there's still a lot of murkiness in terms of what this algorithm will produce, and where these doses will be sent.”