Los Angeles County leaders released a statement Thursday evening clarifying a seemingly confused rule in the county’s vaccine plan: that health care professionals should not throw away the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that they opened up to people who did not attend their consultations.
“The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health does not tolerate the waste of any dose of precious vaccine and is not and is not instructing providers to throw away unused doses,” officials said in the statement. “In fact, we acted quickly to create vaccine clinics in a rapid response time whenever we heard of potential vaccine expirations.”
The statement comes after two TMZ stories about a clinic in Inglewood that provided 150 doses of the vaccine to people who did not meet the county’s vaccination criteria.
LA County is currently using a layered vaccination implementation plan, dictated by state health officials, that prioritizes health workers and residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. (Although the state has expanded the criteria to allow residents aged 65 and over to be vaccinated, LA county officials said they are not yet taking that step, in part because they do not have enough doses.)
If a healthcare professional opens vials of the COVID-19 vaccine, but people do not attend the appointments, the doses are at risk of expiring if not administered within a certain period.
LA County supervisor Janice Hahn, whose fourth district includes several coastal cities, said in an interview with the Times that she was frustrated by the lack of a comprehensive vaccine implementation plan – that she asked the public health department of the county to create in September – and in general, that more doses do not go to residents who need them.
“We still distribute less than half of our vaccines that have been assigned to us, and that is unacceptable to me,” said Hahn.
Health officials said in their statement that while the priority now is to vaccinate frontline health workers and residents of long-term care facilities, the LA County vaccination plan allows exceptions to be made to avoid any waste of health care. vaccine.
The county’s Department of Public Health says it will investigate any reports of vaccine waste or misuse.
“Los Angeles County is committed to vaccinating all residents who want to be protected from this deadly virus and is working with hundreds of partners to increase mass vaccination distribution operations to eligible groups of residents,” officials said in the statement. .
It is not yet clear how many clinics, if any, have thrown out vaccine doses.