Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced that Covid-19 testing at two of the city’s largest sites will end today. Together with the municipality, vaccine distribution will begin by the end of the week.
A statement from the mayor’s office said that local leaders had decided to abandon testing at Dodger Stadium and Veterans Affairs Lot 15 at Jackie Robinson Stadium in Brentwood so that public health officials could immediately focus staff, equipment and other resources on the distribution of the vaccination.
“Since the beginning of this pandemic, Dodger Stadium has been the foundation of our testing infrastructure, a vital part of our effort to track the spread of COVID-19, try to anticipate epidemics and save lives,” said Garcetti.
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“Vaccines are the safest way to defeat this virus and chart a path to recovery, so the city, the county and our entire team are putting our best resources into the field to vaccinate Angelenos as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible . ”
This change in resources will “temporarily reduce testing capacity in LA County, but will more than triple the number of daily vaccines available to be distributed to Angelenos,” according to the mayor’s statement. “The city remains committed to providing free testing to residents, with or without symptoms, at eight permanent locations and six mobile locations in LA
“In the coming weeks, the number of tests offered will increase through existing locations, additional mobile teams and an expanded location at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Anyone looking for a test can find more information at coronavirus.lacity.org/testing or can contact their doctor. “
But the decision comes at a time when Los Angeles experiences what has long been feared: an increase in the number of cases at Christmas, in addition to the increase on Thanksgiving Day and in the fall.
LA’s track record of expanding testing to its 10 million residents has been uneven at best. Offering more tests in the West Valley and, at the same time, reducing them to the region’s largest, most central site can also create obstacles to serving some of the most affected communities in LA.
This, in the midst of what may be the biggest outbreak of the pandemic.
“If you look at the past 4 days, we saw a very high number,” acknowledged LA’s head of public health sciences, Dr. Paul Simon, on Friday. “It’s just a clear indication of what was going on 2 to 4 weeks ago during the holidays.”
“This is clearly the latest increase in winter holidays and New Year’s,” said Simon. “And it is likely to continue in the next few weeks or two. We expect these numbers to remain high in the coming weeks. “
Given Garcetti’s words about how vital tests are, we wonder why the rise in vaccinations appears – in the short term – to be a zero-sum game with testing.
Test reports from the county itself show an increase in demand for tests over the past 10 days, and test appointments from partners Curative and CoreLA are almost full by the end of the week.
The change comes when California Governor Gavin Newsom is committed to vaccinating 1 million people in 10 days. This window closes on Sunday.
The chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Hilda L. Solis, applauded the decision.
“I want to thank Mayor Eric Garcetti, the entire city of Los Angeles and the Dodgers organization for their partnership to get us to this point,” said Solis.
“For eight months, Dodger Stadium served as a lifeline for so many Angelenos – providing free access to tests. In this dark moment, where cases, hospitalizations and deaths are skyrocketing, this bold step of offering Covid-19 testing and vaccines in the heart of Los Angeles reflects the dual nature of this moment – it’s dark, but at the same time hopeful, ”she said . “The robust testing of COVID-19 is the key to getting out of this current and unprecedented wave and the vaccine is the key to ending the pandemic once and for all.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services also announced that it will discontinue using Covid-19 curative PCR tests at its pop-up test sites this week, following a federal alert about the potential for false-negative results, but the tests will still be used at the test sites in the city of Los Angeles.
The county announced the change on Sunday night, saying the decision was made in response to a recent alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the possibility of false negative results.
Curative, a diagnostic company based in San Dimas, provided a limited number of tests at pop-up test sites supported by the county as of mid-December. Between December 13 and January 2, a total of 24,241 curative tests were administered, making up about 10% of all COVID-19 tests at county-sponsored test sites during that time.
The curative tests will be replaced by Fulgent Genetics tests.
The FDA alert emphasized that the Dressing test should be administered according to its authorized use – which limits it to use in people who have symptoms of COVID-19. The Los Angeles test is open to people, regardless of symptoms.
Mayor Eric Garcetti last week defended the use of curative tests in test sites operated by the city, saying that administering them to asymptomatic people allowed the city to catch the virus in 92,000 people who would not have been detected otherwise. He said the city has no plans to abandon curative tests.
The Dodger Stadium site will soon be able to vaccinate up to 12,000 people a day when it is fully up and running.
More than one million Angelenos have been tested for COVID-19 at Dodger Stadium since its opening in May 2020, and no existing test commitments are affected by this week’s operational changes. Vaccines on site will be distributed according to CDC, state and county guidelines for eligible populations.
The City News Service contributed to this report.