Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that most of Friday’s vaccination appointments with Covid-19 in cities will be delayed due to delays in vaccine delivery caused by severe winter storms across the country. It is the second consecutive Friday that the city’s sites are hampered by a lack of supply.
Three weeks ago, the city had an average of about 13,000 doses administered per day.
Approximately 12,500 patients will soon receive a text, email or telephone notice that their appointment for Friday has been postponed. As soon as the City confirms the arrival of a new batch of doses in the next few days, all patients who missed the appointment will be prioritized and will receive a notification with the details of their new appointment automatically rescheduled.
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Los Angeles officials do not receive 3-week vaccine projections promised by President Joe Biden
The city expected to receive 58,000 doses this week, which was considerably less than the 90,000 doses two weeks earlier.
Garcetti also announced on Thursday that another 37,000 doses scheduled for next week were also postponed.
The county has a capacity of 500,000 available hours this week, according to an official statement. However, there are only enough doses to deliver less than half of that; just over 211,000 queries.
The deadline reported yesterday that county officials have revealed that they are not receiving a promised federal projection of the amount of vaccine that will come in the next three weeks. That was a promise made by President Joe Biden on his second day in office.
In fact, until Wednesday, the county’s chief health officer had no visibility about how many doses would come in the next week.
“I have no projection of what we are getting [in the] in the next 2-3 weeks, ”said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer in a call to reporters on Wednesday. Not only that, Ferrer revealed that “we delayed getting our numbers for the next week”.
Since that 90,000 dose high two weeks ago, the city and county of Los Angeles have been affected by the shortage. Each prioritized the second dose due to fears that newly vaccinated residents may not receive a second dose in time. Garcetti even had to close the city’s biggest testing ground, Dodger Stadium, for two days last weekend.
“Bad weather across the country has interrupted travel and shipments across the country, including the delay in delivering our vaccines,” said Mayor Garcetti. “Our city is ready to deliver COVID-19 vaccines quickly, safely and equitably – and as soon as the doses arrive in Los Angeles, we will put them in people’s arms immediately.”
“We are collaborating closely with the city of Los Angeles to ensure that the vaccination distribution process is as smooth as possible,” said Dr. Sujal Mandavia, Medical Director at Carbon Health. “Second dose appointments will be prioritized and it is our intention to administer these second doses within the time limit recommended by the CDC of 42 days after the first dose.”
Adverse weather conditions across the country have prevented two separate shipments: 26,000 doses, which were due to arrive on Tuesday, are currently in Kentucky; another 37,000, destined for next week’s appointments, are in Tennessee. Grounded flights and frozen roads prevented delivery of these and other vaccine shipments across the country.
Thursday’s announcement affects only the large-scale vaccination sites in the city of Los Angeles. Vaccinations at the city’s mobile clinics will continue as planned. The mayor and his team will continue to monitor the situation and the authorities will determine the status of Saturday’s vaccination appointments as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday that the state expects 3 million doses a week by March 1 and 4 million a week by April 30. This reality seems very, very distant.