In the coming weeks, Los Angeles County’s COVID-19 vaccine supply will become more restricted due to the expected shortage of vaccines manufactured by Johnson & Johnson – just as people with underlying health problems will become eligible for vaccines.
“In the next two weeks, we will have no Johnson & Johnson [vaccine doses]. This is an industrial production issue, ”said LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer on Tuesday, warning that vaccine supplies in March will be tight.
California is still finalizing the list of medical conditions that will qualify people under the age of 65 to inject COVID-19 as of Monday, Ferrer said.
A state bulletin last month said that as of March 15, healthcare professionals can use their judgment to vaccinate people aged 16 to 64 who are considered to be at high risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19 due to problems health problems like cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic lung disease, an immune system compromised as a result of an organ transplant, Down syndrome, pregnancy, sickle cell disease, heart problems, severe obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Ferrer predicts that hundreds of thousands of others in LA County with underlying diseases will become eligible for the vaccine.
“Our numbers are likely to drop somewhat with the amount of doses we receive, but we will have many more people who will be eligible on Monday,” said Ferrer. “Then again, I feel bad always asking everyone to be a little patient, because even if it is your turn, it will still be difficult to get appointments.”
Ferrer suggested that people with underlying illnesses contact their health care professionals to ask about how to get the vaccine. “The easiest way to get vaccinated is to go to your provider, or if your provider has an agreement with a network, to be vaccinated,” said Ferrer.
Adding to the complexity of vaccination efforts is growing dissatisfaction among authorities in counties across the state that are being forced to use the state’s My Turn marking system to administer vaccinations.
Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of health services for LA County, said that adopting the My Turn system to manage vaccinations for the county’s public hospital system would disrupt her agency’s vaccination efforts, resulting in inefficiency and difficulties.
Ghaly said his department will continue to use its own electronic health record system to manage vaccinations and, later, to send information to a state immunization registry. Switching to the My Turn system would force employees to enter data twice – once in the county health system database and again in the My Turn system, she noted.
Ghaly called My Turn a “completely parallel and unnecessary system”.
Ferrer supported Ghaly’s concerns. “Please do not add a layer of complexity to healthcare providers who are already doing a good job,” said Ferrer.
The My Turn system was also criticized for relying previously on access codes that were distributed to people in poor communities to receive vaccines. The codes were leaked, resulting in people from wealthier and predominantly white communities showing up at vaccination sites in low-income and mostly non-white neighborhoods, undermining efforts to target vaccines to the poorest areas. Partly as a result, people living in the wealthiest communities in California received double the doses of vaccine from those living in the poorest neighborhoods.
One solution proposed by the state has been to use individualized codes, but Ferrer said it is also not a good option.
“If you are a [healthcare] provider, do you know how much work it takes to call all your patients to provide individual codes so they can sign up for an appointment, instead of just giving them an appointment? ”Ferrer said at the LA County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday. “No one really wants to issue individual codes to their patients so that they can enter My turn with a secure consultation.”
The My Turn system fails in other ways – including sending thousands of residents to vaccination sites in the wrong county, where they are told they cannot get the vaccine.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger said she was told by San Bernardino County officials that 5,000 Los Angeles County residents showed up for vaccinations because the My Turn website inadvertently sent them.
Ferrer said this is the “biggest problem for all counties at the moment” because My Turn is not set up to recognize geographic boundaries that would prevent residents from registering for photos outside their own county.
This resulted in people driving long distances, believing they would be vaccinated. only to be rejected, Ferrer said.
“People are very angry, and understandably, but the [vaccine] allocations are made based on the populations of the counties and, in times of scarcity, we have to ensure that we can take care of the people who live and work in this county, and this has not been corrected in Meu Vire, ”Ferrer said.