In 
Spencer Custodio |
This story has been updated.
After a scare in the storage of the coronavirus vaccine at Soka University, Orange County health officials said on Wednesday that doses can still be administered after talking to the manufacturer.
Editor’s note: As the only non-profit and non-partisan newsroom in Orange County, Voice of OC brings you the best and most comprehensive local news about Coronavirus absolutely free of charge. No ads, no paywalls. We need your help. Please make a tax-deductible donation today to support local news.
“A refrigeration problem was detected last night, making some vaccines unusable at this time,” county spokeswoman Molly Nichelson said in a text message on Wednesday afternoon. “An additional vaccine was brought in to fulfill all appointments scheduled at Soka. Without interrupting our vaccination efforts. “
She also said that county officials are working with the manufacturer to see if any doses can be recovered.
Nichelson did not say how many vaccines could have been damaged or discarded.
In a late Wednesday afternoon announcement, county officials said Pfizer determined that the vaccines are safe after officials prevented them from distributing them to be safe.
“After reviewing the details, the manufacturer warned that the temperature variation did not impair the safety or efficacy of the vaccine and provided confirmation that the vaccine is safe to dispense under the normal protocol,” said Nichelson in a text message Wednesday. -market. “There were no interruptions in the schedule of appointments or administration of the vaccine at the Soka University Super POD site today.”
Meanwhile, waves of residents have accessed Twitter to complain about the sudden rescheduling of their future commitments.
Most of the rescheduled appointments were for this weekend.
“Any second dose # OCCOVID19 vaccination appointments scheduled for February 13 and 14 in @OCGovCA Super PODs had to be reprogrammed to better manage vaccine supply. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to the community, ”says a tweet on Wednesday afternoon from the county health agency.
While county public health officials are managing an apparent relocation of vaccines, calls are getting louder to get data on exactly where vaccines are going in the OC and to vaccinate the most vulnerable people.
Elected officials in Orange County are increasingly calling on local and state public health officials to release coronavirus vaccination data divided by postal codes in an effort to target shots at the most affected communities.
“I think it should be mentioned again, as we all know that Latinos are disproportionately behind vaccination rates,” said Anaheim city councilor Avelino Valencia during Tuesday’s council meeting. “I would like to recommend that we work to improve vaccination numbers.”
Although Anaheim has a super vaccination site at Disneyland, it is not known how many city residents were vaccinated.
Mayor Harry Sidhu joined Avelino and asked for vaccines in the most affected areas.
Sidhu also said that he wants data on “some of the main postal codes of neighborhoods … we have many cases of COVID”.
Councilman José Moreno wants not only the postal code data, but also information about who is being vaccinated in the Disneyland supersite.
“A figure that suggests that Anaheim is largely not being vaccinated in the super pod,” said Moreno, pointing to vaccination demographics for Latinos, which is 11%, according to a county vaccine tracker.
“Considering that our city is 55% Latin and we know that it is disproportionately a working class … we know that they are not being vaccinated. In the absence of more data, I can only come to the conclusion that there is a deep inequality, ”said Moreno.
Santa Ana council members are also pushing the county for CEP data and targeted vaccinations in the city.
During a Zoom meeting with county health officials and community health clinics Last week, the mayor of Santa Ana, Vicente Sarmiento, said that the county’s CEO, Frank Kim, realized that there weren’t many Latinos on the Disneyland super site.
“The demographic group does not really fit in with those who are affected most disproportionately, even for him,” said Sarmiento.
During Tuesday’s County Supervisors’s meeting, the OC’s health officer, Dr. Clayton Chau, said that current vaccine distribution data is unreliable.
Chau also said that authorities are working to establish a vaccination site at Santa Ana College and Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, although no definitive timetable has been given.
Smaller neighborhood vaccination clinics are expected to begin in Anaheim and Santa Ana from Friday.
Governor Gavin Newsom has suggested that state data on vaccination demographics will arrive soon.
“Of all the reports you have seen at the county level, the state will be releasing aggregates … later this week,” Newsom said during a news conference on Wednesday at Fresno Fairgrounds.
Some people shouted “remember Gavin” during his press conference while the remember efforts against it are growing to the point where they are likely to vote.
He has faced criticism for some of the public health orders, such as banning outdoor dining and leaving shopping malls open during regional blockades that ended last month.
Newsom was also harshly criticized for dining inside a high-end restaurant with friends and lobbyists at a time when indoor meals were closed last year.
There are still doubts about how comprehensive the vaccination data will be across the state.
At the OC Supervisors’ meeting on Tuesday, Chau said an official at a local hospital told him that the state is not collecting some of the data that hospitals are sending to the vaccine notification system across the state.
“We worked with the person responsible for the vaccine, so he entered the system where he carried information to the state every night. She realized that even though she uploaded zip code information, the state is not getting zip code information, ”said Chau.
Meanwhile, Newsom said more than 100,000 vaccines are being sent directly from federal employees to the approximately 100 pharmacies in “underserved communities”.
However, the three pharmacies that opened in OC are nowhere near the hardest hit areas.
Three locations are scheduled to open at CVS pharmacies in Irvine, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach to vaccinate people 65 and older.
Although pharmacy vaccines are available to all elderly people, concerns have arisen about some residents in the hardest-hit areas struggling to reach CVS clinics.
Dr. Shruti Gohil, an infectious doctor who treats patients with viruses at UC Irvine Medical Center, said she does not understand why these three sites were chosen compared to those in Santa Ana, Garden Grove and other hard-hit areas.
“So it puzzles me, honestly. I don’t understand why this is the first target, ”said Gohil.
CVS employees did not answer questions about how exactly the locations were chosen.
Gohil said he understands that state guidelines can undermine some targeted efforts, but there is still room for maneuver in them, such as vaccinating the elderly in the poorest OC communities.
“I understand, however, that the orientation has been to include people aged 65 and over. So in this population, they are just trying to get things out there, ”said Gohil. “But it shouldn’t be just for that group. It really should be centered on the most affected communities. ”
Meanwhile, hospitalizations continue to decline.
As of Wednesday, 1,009 people have been hospitalized, including 310 in intensive care units.
But deaths continue to increase.
The virus has already killed 3,451 people, including 35 new deaths reported today, according to the county Health Agency.
Recently reported deaths may extend for weeks due to delays in reporting.
Since the beginning of February, 389 deaths have been recorded.
There were 1,187 deaths reported in January, many of which occurred in December, when hospitals were filling up with patients with viruses.
The virus has killed the flu more than five times on an annual average.
It also kills more than heart disease, Alzheimer’s and stroke on an annual average.
For contextual purposes, Orange County has averaged about 20,000 deaths per year since 2016, including 543 annual flu deaths, according to state health data.
According to state mortality statistics, cancer kills more than 4,600 people, heart disease kills more than 2,800, more than 1,400 die from Alzheimer’s disease and strokes kill more than 1,300 people.
Orange County has already exceeded its annual average of 20,000 deaths, with 23,883 people killed in December, according to the latest available state data.
Here is the latest information on virus numbers in Orange County from county data:
Infections | Hospitalizations and deaths | City to city data | Demography
Spencer Custodio is a reporter on the Voice of OC team. You can reach it at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio