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Wealthy Californians hope to skip the line and gain early access to a coronavirus vaccine by offering to make significant donations to hospitals and charities.
Exclusive physician practices have revealed that they are receiving hundreds of calls from their clients hoping that their status and wealth will earn them a spot at the top of the list.
According to physician Jeff Toll, one of his clients even offered to make a five-figure donation to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of the state’s first hospitals to receive vaccinations, where he also has admitting privileges.
‘If I donate $ 25,000 to Cedars, will that help me get in line?’ the customer supposedly asked.
Wealthy Californians hope to have early access to a coronavirus vaccine by offering to make donations to hospitals. In the photo, an emergency medicine worker receives a vaccine.
It comes as the state broke another record for new daily cases, 53,326, on Friday.
“We get hundreds of calls every day,” Ehsan Ali, who runs the Beverly Hills Concierge Doctor, told The Los Angeles Times.
She charges between $ 2,000 and $ 10,000 a year for personalized attention and counts Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber among her clients.
“This is the first time that I have not been able to get something for my patients,” he added.
However, all doctors have been forced to say “no” despite the inconvenience, as the state maintains strict restrictions on who receives the first batches of their vaccine.
California is offering the vaccine first to healthcare workers and nursing home residents, then to essential workers and those with chronic diseases, before it is offered to the public more generally.
Governor Gavin Newsom has stated that health officials will be “very aggressive in ensuring that those with means, those with influence, do not displace those who most deserve vaccines.”
‘To those who think they can get ahead of the line, and to those who think because they have resources or because they have relationships that will allow them to do so. We will be monitoring that very, very, closely, ” Newsom added.
‘We will prioritize, and hope that everyone in the healthcare delivery system will hold to the same ethical standard of truly prioritizing those who need it most. And the true heroes of this pandemic are the frontline healthcare workers, and those are the people we must protect and we must prioritize moving forward. ‘
Yet despite insistence from health officials that these criteria will hold across the board, it hasn’t stopped the wealthy from trying.
Requests have been specifically high in Southern California, which is currently the epicenter of the outbreak in the state.
“They wanted it yesterday,” said Dr. David Nazarian of My Concierge MD in Beverly Hills. “We will follow the rules, but we are doing everything we can to secure and distribute the vaccine when it becomes available.”
Dr. Abe Malkin, founder of Concierge MD LA, has also received many calls to offer donations in exchange for the dose of the vaccine.
“I would say that between 5 and 10 percent of them were willing to try to make some contribution to a charity to get in line,” according to Malkin.
Many clients have been placed on waiting lists at the expensive clinics to receive a dose of the vaccine as quickly as possible.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, pictured, has stated that health officials will be ‘very aggressive in making sure that those with means, those with influence, do not displace those most deserving of vaccines’ as wealthy Californians try to jump the line.
These boutique practices are also acquiring the expensive ultra-low temperature freezers needed to store Pfizer vaccines as they sign up to administer the vaccine so they can get them to a wealthy clientele as soon as possible.
Currently, only the US government can distribute the vaccines, as Pfizer and Moderna have not yet made them available to doctors or private citizens for purchase.
The stocks of the wealthy in California are following a global trend where the majority of the world’s vaccine doses have been purchased by wealthier countries.
Rich countries that make up only 14 percent of the world’s population have used their resources and influence to capture 96 percent of Pfizer’s vaccine and 100 percent of Moderna’s, according to a report by Oxfam and other organizations from human rights.
However, Alison Bateman-House, assistant professor of medical ethics at New York University, claimed that the West Coast elite may not be looking for an early vaccine for selfish reasons.
“Every system has a weak link somewhere, and I’m sure someone will find it and someone will exploit it,” Bateman-House said. “The question is: Where will that weak link be and how quickly will it be identified and stopped?”
The death toll in California on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (295, 394, 288 and 265) were the four deadliest days the state has seen, as shown above.
California received its first 327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week, administering the first shots to front-line healthcare workers battling the virus.
“I think one of the difficult things is that the doctors who care for these high-powered people can say, no, wait,” Toll admitted. “These people don’t usually have to wait.”
California broke another record for daily coronavirus cases on Friday with 53,326, reported in a single day.
The state has now averaged more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases per day over the past week, which is ten times more than the late October figures.
It comes as deaths in the state are also reaching record levels.
Last week, California recorded seven percent of the total deaths since the start of the pandemic, causing the loss of more than 1,500 residents to the virus.
His death toll on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (295, 394, 288 and 265) were the deadliest four days the state has seen.
Hospitalizations have also broken a record for 20 days in a row, having reached 16,019 on Thursday, including 3,447 people in intensive care units.
Nationally there have been more than 17.4 million cases and 313,669 deaths.
