SACRAMENTO, California (AP) – California is turning baseball stadiums, fairs and even a Disneyland Resort parking lot into mass vaccination sites as the coronavirus outbreak overwhelms hospitals and sets a new deadly record in the state.
California’s COVID-19 death toll reached 30,000 on Monday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
It took six months for the country’s most populous state to reach 10,000 deaths, but only a month to jump from 20,000 to 30,000 deaths. California ranks third nationally in deaths related to COVID-19, behind Texas and New York, which is number 1 with almost 40,000.
Public health officials estimate that about 12% of people who contract the virus will need hospital care, usually several weeks after infection, as they get sick.
Governor Gavin Newsom and public health officials are relying on widespread vaccinations to help stem the tide of new infections, beginning with medical workers and the most vulnerable elderly, such as those in nursing homes.
Newsom, a Democrat, acknowledged that vaccine distribution has been very slow and he has promised that 1 million vaccines will be administered this week, more than double what has been done so far.
This effort will require what Newsom called a “hands-on deck approach”, including vaccinations dispensed by pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, dentists, paramedics and emergency medical technicians and members of the California National Guard.
Orange County, south of Los Angeles County, announced on Monday that its first mass vaccination site will be at the Disneyland Resort parking lot in Anaheim. It is one of five locations to be created to vaccinate thousands of people daily.
The websites are “absolutely essential to stop this deadly virus,” said county supervisor Doug Chaffee in a statement.
The state will broadly expand its efforts with new mass vaccination sites in the parking lots at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Petco Park in San Diego and the CalExpo fairground in Sacramento.
Cars lined up on Monday morning near the downtown San Diego stadium, where officials intended to inoculate 5,000 health workers daily.
“It’s like a trip to Disneyland,” with cars passing by, said Heather Buschman, a spokeswoman for UC San Diego Health, whose medical team was administering the injections.
She said people looked forward to being vaccinated, with more than 12,500 health workers in San Diego County making appointments initially.
By the end of the week, the city of Los Angeles planned to convert its massive COVID-19 test site at Dodger Stadium into a vaccination center to handle 12,000 vaccines daily.
Los Angeles County is an epicenter for the COVID-19 outbreak, responsible for about 40% of California-related deaths and a large number of new cases.
On Monday, nearly 8,000 people were hospitalized in Los Angeles County, which had less than 50 intensive care units available in an area with a population of 10 million, said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of Health Services county.
Although the county has seen a drop in new cases, director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, said it was probably due to declining exams after the New Year’s holiday. She predicted another increase in cases of people who gathered unsafe during the holiday.
Ferrer also said that COVID-19 is still killing someone in the county every eight minutes, on average.
There is a hint of hope, with new hospitalizations across the state dropping from about 3,500 earlier this month to about 2,500. Some predictions predicted that hospitalizations would stabilize by the end of the month.
However, recent scary leaps into new positive cases show that the state may simply have bought time to prepare for what officials still hope to be a “wave on wave” in the coming weeks driven by New Year celebrations, said authorities.
Still, the state may have “a little breathing space” for hospitals with scarce oxygen supplies and staff, and for 1,000 newly hired medical workers to be increased by another 1,000 or more before peak peaks, said Dr Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.
Lawmakers also continued to plead with people to maintain social distance to slow the spread of the infection. In Los Angeles County, residents were being urged to wear masks even when they were at home, if they regularly left and lived with someone elderly or at high risk.
“To die of COVID in the hospital means to die alone,” said Hilda Solis, chairman of the county Council of Supervisors. “Visitors are not allowed in hospitals for their own safety. Families are sharing their final farewells on tablets and cell phones. “
“One of the most moving conversations that our healthcare professionals share is about those last words, when children apologize to their parents and grandparents for bringing COVID into their homes, for making them sick,” said Solis. “And those excuses are just a few of the last words your loved ones will hear. “
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Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers John Antczak, Robert Jablon and Christopher Weber of Los Angeles contributed to this report.