- An estimated 4,300 people received less of the Pfizer vaccine than they should have, KTVU reported March 4.
- Too little of the vaccine was administered due to a problem with syringes on March 1, the media outlet said.
- But California health officials said that people received a sufficient dose, and didn’t require booster shots.
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Thousands of people who visited a mass vaccination site in Oakland, California, on March 1 received the wrong dosage of the Pfizer vaccine, KTVU reported.
An estimated 4,300 people were administered less than the recommended dose while getting a shot at the Oakland Coliseum, two unnamed medical workers told the media outlet.
The optimal vaccine dosage is 0.3-mL of Pfizer but thousands of people received around 0.2 mL, KTVU said.
Due to a problem with the syringes, too little of the COVID-19 vaccine was administered, the media outlet reported.
The mixup took place in the morning but was identified and resolved by 2 pm, state officials confirmed to KTVU.
Both agencies that run the mass vaccination site — the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — were unaware of the issue until KTVU alerted them of it on March 2.
Cal OES, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, State Department of Public Health, United States Health and Human Services (HHS), and Pfizer held emergency meetings on March 2 to discuss the error, a California OES spokesperson told the media outlet.
Cal OES did not deny that a lesser dose had been given. Instead, a spokesman told KTVU that the amount not given to people was “negligible.” Therefore, nobody had been called back for an extra booster shot, he said.
Cal OES said that Pfizer had told the agency that there’s no reason to be concerned, unless someone were to receive less than half of a single shot — in which case they should get another shot right away.
The public should be “rest assured that vaccines administered at the Coliseum are being dispensed in a manner consistent with medical and scientific best practices and will work as designed,” officials said, per KRON4
Dr. John Swartzberg, UC Berkeley public health clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology, told KTVU Saturday that people “should be fine” as long as they get their second dose of the vaccine.
The California Department of Health have neither confirmed nor denied the allegations provided to KTVU earlier in the week, KTVU reported Sunday.