LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County stepped up vaccination efforts on Tuesday in its battle with the coronavirus, opening five large-scale vaccination centers to complement 75 smaller sites and the city’s high-capacity center at Dodger Stadium. County officials are also expanding testing to people 65 and older.
The inaugurations arrive at a critical stage in the municipality’s struggle against COVID-19, with transmission rates remaining high and the number of cases and deaths increasing rapidly. Hospitalizations dropped slightly last week, but health officials still fear a resurgence of hospitalizations at medical centers because of infections that occurred during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Over the weekend, the county confirmed the first local case of a variant strain of the virus first detected in the UK. This strain, known as B.1.1.7, is not considered more deadly, but it is much more contagious and passes easily from person to person with the potential to spread quickly among the population.
On Monday night, officials at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced that they had identified yet another strain of the virus, known as CAL.20C, which was detected in more than a third of COVID-19 patients being treated at the hospital. The strain was also found in about a quarter of the samples from patients with COVID-19 in southern California.
“The recent increase in COVID-19 positive cases in Southern California coincides with the emergence of CAL.20C,” Eric Vail, physician and assistant professor of pathology and director of molecular pathology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai , said in a statement released Monday.
Cedars-Sinai officials said the CAL.20C strain is distinct from the UK variant. It is not yet clear whether the CAL.20C strain spreads faster, is more deadly, or is resistant to current virus treatments. But Cedars-Sinai researchers said the strain is partly responsible for the huge increase in cases that the county has experienced in the past two months. Hospital officials said the strain was virtually non-existent in the county in October, but in December it accounted for 36.4% of COVID-19 cases in Cedars-Sinai and 24% of COVID-19 samples collected in Southern California.
The strain has also been detected in patients in northern California, New York, Washington and abroad in Oceania, according to Cedars-Sinai.
Los Angeles County surpassed 1 million cumulative cases during the pandemic over the weekend. Although this milestone represents about a tenth of the general population of the county, modeling released last week estimated that up to a third of residents were infected at some point, with many of them never knowing, but still able to spread the virus to others.
With at least 10 percent of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization, the largest number of cases will translate into higher numbers of hospitalizations and, ultimately, more deaths.
The increase in the number of deaths from the virus sparked a grim attitude on Sunday by Southland air quality regulators, who suspended the number of bodies that local crematoriums could burn. Crematoriums usually operate under a limit designed to reduce the effect of cremations on air quality.
The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to meet in closed session on Tuesday morning to discuss a variety of topics. The board was expected last week to discuss possible new health restrictions – such as the closure of closed malls and other non-essential retail businesses – but took no immediate action. It was not clear whether the matter would be discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.
Meanwhile, the Secretariat of Public Health will hold a virtual city hall on Tuesday at 6 pm to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine, how it was developed, where it will be distributed and when it will be made available to the general public. The city hall will be broadcast live on the department’s pages on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. People can also send questions before the meeting.
The county reported 88 more deaths from COVID-19 and 9,927 new infections on Monday, noting that the numbers may be artificially low because of a delay in Martin Luther King Jr.’s weekend and holiday reports. Current hospitalizations in the county they reached 7,328 on Monday, county officials said.
The new deaths, along with one reported by health officials in Pasadena, brought the total death toll in the county to 13,937. Los Angeles County’s new cases, along with 107 confirmed by Pasadena, have increased the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the county since the pandemic began to 1,024,297.
According to the state, there were 7,322 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 on Monday, continuing the downward trend from the previous week. Hospitalizations peaked at more than 8,000 in early January, putting pressure on hospitals across the county, forcing ambulances to wait hours to unload patients and alerting medical centers to care for patients in gift shops and cafeterias.
But although the population of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has shown a downward trend, intensive care units remain full of virus patients. According to the state, there were 1,728 patients with COVID-19 in ICUs in the municipality, which has approximately 2,500 licensed ICU beds.
Health officials said in recent weeks that about two-thirds of ICU patients in the county are being treated for COVID-19, leaving little room for people who need ICU care for other reasons.
Authorities warned that while new hospital admissions appear to have stabilized, the numbers could skyrocket again, as people infected at Christmas and New Year begin to develop symptoms and need medical attention.
The county announced an important milestone in its vaccination efforts on Monday. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, nearly 99% of qualified nursing centers in the county administered the first doses of the vaccine to residents and staff. The remaining five nursing homes will administer vaccines this week.
And at the end of Monday, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Hilda Solis issued an order making COVID-19 vaccines available to anyone aged 65 and over, starting on Thursday – despite concerns from health officials about the supply of doses.
Solis’ decision was in line with the guidance released last week by Governor Gavin Newsom. But it did conflict with comments from county health officials, who wanted to wait until vaccinations by frontline health workers were completed before offering limited vaccine supplies to a wider range of people.
Concerns over vaccine supply increased on Sunday night, when the state epidemiologist warned providers to stop administering doses of a batch of 330,000 Modern vaccines in response to allergic reactions suffered by a handful of people in San Diego.
The 330,000 doses of Moderna vaccine that are no longer available represent 10% of all vaccines received by the state so far – harming counties like Los Angeles, which have been requesting more vaccine allocations to meet demand.
The stock is so short that operators at the Dodger Stadium vaccination clinic warned over the weekend that they could run out of doses as early as Wednesday.
The affected modern vaccines have been distributed to 287 locations in California. It was not clear whether any of these locations were in Los Angeles County.
Due to strong winds on Tuesday, a COVID-19 vaccination post at the Hansen dam closed for the rest of the day, according to the city’s fire department. All vaccination appointments were transferred to the vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.
To learn more about the vaccination phases and make an appointment, visit the website.
Don’t miss local and state news about coronavirus development and precautions. Sign up to receive patch alerts and daily newsletters.
Nicole Charky, patch editor and city news service, contributed to this report.