State officials in California, a recent epicenter of the United States pandemic, lifted the regional home stay order for all five regions on Monday in light of expectations that the ICU bed capacity would reach a fundamental limit in four weeks .
Trends are moving in a positive direction also in Los Angeles County, which has cut more than half the number of daily positive cases since it peaked in early January, said county public health director Barbara Ferrer.
But she warned that coronavirus variants pose a growing threat.
“They will become dominant and make it easier for people to be infected and lead to a sudden increase,” said Ferrer, while urging residents to remain vigilant.
“This would not be the time to think just because we are reopening that things are getting better,” she said, noting that asymptomatic spread is a problem. “We need to move forward in the coming weeks with caution. In many other areas where we are reopening our sectors, we have actually seen an increase in our cases,” said Ferrer.
Withdrawing the order means a return to the four-tier reopening system, and Los Angeles County will lift restrictions on outdoor dining and a local nighttime curfew for non-essential workers on Friday, Ferrer said. But these reopenings will require security changes, and Ferrer said he plans to meet with restaurant workers and unions on Wednesday to discuss the changes.
Some elected officials questioned the timing of lifting restrictions in the state, but California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said on Tuesday that he believes he was suspended “at the right time”.
“This was not a regional order to stay at home based solely on community transmission rates, it was really focused on what we would see in hospitals in a few weeks,” explained Dr. Ghaly.
Limited vaccines and slow release
Another cause for concern is the limited supply of vaccines, Ferrer said.
Los Angeles County receives more than 168,000 doses of the vaccine weekly, but this is slowly decreasing the number of people – more than 2 million people – who are currently eligible to be vaccinated, she said.
“It will take patience because we just don’t have enough doses,” she said. “We are really with the restricted offer at the moment. This is an issue at the federal level, the government has promised to both be more transparent, but also to rapidly increase production, so that we can get more supplies here in the county. “
The unpredictability of doses each week makes it difficult to open vaccine appointments beyond one week at a time, said Ferrer. The next two weeks will be “difficult”, she said.
The offer is limited across the state, but the California Department of Public Health announced on Tuesday that a new system will be introduced to respond to criticisms about slow and inefficient dose distribution.
Beginning next month, all Californians in Phase 1B Level 1 will be able to make an appointment to receive the vaccine under a statewide standardized system. These people include health workers, residents over 65, education and day care, emergency services and food and agriculture workers.
Instead of counties and hospitals operating their own vaccination delivery systems, the state will now use a third-party administrator who will distribute vaccines directly to providers to maximize the efficiency of distribution, they said.
“We learned that to accelerate the pace, we need to scale up our efforts to ensure that vaccine supplies go to arms as quickly as they reach the state,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
CNN’s Stella Chan and Sarah Moon contributed to this report.