Despite a frustratingly slow supply line, the distribution of coronavirus vaccines to people aged 65 and over in Los Angeles County will begin on Wednesday, January 20. The elderly will be able to start making reservations to get their first vaccines starting this afternoon, officials said Tuesday, January 19.
Reservations can be made by visiting VaccinateLACounty.com or by calling COVID’s new hotline at (833) 540-0473, 8 am to 8 pm, seven days a week.
The new clarity on implementation comes after pressure from the public and the county Council of Supervisors to place the vaccine in the arms of people over 65 earlier.
“I want to ask for patience,” said LA County Chief Public Health, Barbara Ferrer, as she and other local officials informed the public at Pomona Fairplex, home to one of five gigantic vaccination posts opened across the county on Tuesday. market. “We don’t have enough COVID-19 vaccine for everyone, and that includes people aged 65 and over. But let’s get there. “
Up to this point, the first priority – known as Phase 1A Tier 1 across the state – has been for the county’s 800,000 health professionals and qualified nursing facility staff and residents. But now the pool is going to spread to the elderly.
Concerns about the sporadic supply of vaccines in the county persist. Authorities said they were unable to assess whether it will resist meeting the inoculation demands of the state’s most populous county, where the population aged 65 and over is 1.3 million.
That depends entirely on the federal government, they said, but they hoped that communication would improve with the inauguration of a new government.
At the moment, there are only enough doses to survive this week, officials said.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the county reported 186 new deaths and 7,902 new cases of COVID-19, totaling 14,122 and 1,031,874, respectively.
The number of hospitalizations, although still at alarming levels in overburdened hospitals, continued its very gradual decline. The state panel listed 7,523 people being treated in hospitals, compared to 7,322 on Monday, with 24% of them in intensive care.
County statistics do not include the latest figures for Pasadena and Long Beach, cities that run their own health departments.
Pasadena posted 69 new cases, which have raised their total since the pandemic began to 9,408; the death toll in the city remained at 192.
The last reported figures for Long Beach were on Friday, January 15. On Saturday, January 16, the city reported 15 new deaths, for a total of 535, and 1,530 new cases, for a total of 44,418. Long Beach will be updated for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Wednesday’s report, officials said.
The county received more than 685,000 doses, said Ferrer. As of Tuesday, more than 348,000 vaccines have been administered. More than 271,000 first doses and more than 77,000 second doses were administered, she added.
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the municipality expects to receive 168 thousand more doses. However: “We are still not sure about our allocations for the next week,” said Ferrer.
Initially, the authorities hoped to pass through that population by the end of the month and start vaccinating those over 65 sometime in early February.
But as other municipalities, public health departments, private providers and some clinics began to operate more quickly, local authorities began to put more pressure on the elderly to be vaccinated.
On Monday, supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger were asking health officials to open the vaccine launch.
“As the largest county in the country, I am grateful for the great undertaking that will be to vaccinate 10 million people twice,” said Hahn in a letter. “However, the vaccine was not launched as fast as it should have been.”
Hahn said she was disappointed that the county was able to administer only about half the doses of the vaccine they have received so far. Across California, the story is similar, with the state receiving about 3.5 million doses, but only able to administer about a third of that number.
Barger also called for flexibility in the initial plan.
“Governor @GavinNewsom encouraged all counties to start vaccinating residents aged 65 and over so that we can protect our residents who are most vulnerable to this virus. The county of LA needs to follow the example of the state without further ado, ”tweeted Hahn.
At the end of Monday, the chairman of the board, supervisors Hilda Solis, signed an executive order demanding that the vaccine be made available to people over 65.
And on Tuesday, the Council met behind closed doors on the subject – a prelude to Tuesday’s announcement.
Solis said the Council simply could not accept that a population so humiliated by the pandemic would not have a chance to be vaccinated immediately.
“It’s about equality,” she said. “Older adults were unfairly affected by the virus. They stayed at home for months, isolated. “
Supervisor Janice Hahn repeated Solis: “More than 70 percent of the people we are losing to COVID-19 are over 65. We need to vaccinate this group and protect it from this virus as soon as possible. ”
Solis said the council has been contemplating the change for the past two weeks, but was encouraged by Newsom’s announcement last week that state vaccines could be opened to the elderly.
While county public health was working on its initial strategy – finishing health workers and then going to the elderly – Ferrer said his department remained flexible.
Solis’ executive order on Monday did not change that, she said.
“I don’t see this as a cancellation by the Department of Public Health,” said Ferrer. “We work very closely with Supervisor Solis and all supervisors to come up with a plan that will benefit everyone in this county and really roll out the vaccine as quickly as possible for those in the priority groups.”
Ferrer said the plan to inoculate healthcare workers is “robust” enough to allow authorities to switch to a plan that incorporates the remaining healthcare workers who need vaccines and an elderly population who urgently need vaccines. And they hope to have public-private partnerships with groups like Kaiser-Permanante.
The supervisors’ impulse amplified the recent confusion – and frustration – among the elderly who sought the vaccine.
Part of the frustration was evident on Tuesday morning, when some elderly people seeking a vaccine were rejected at some of the five newly opened mass vaccination sites that were inoculating only frontline health workers.
Some were confused about how to apply. Some thought they could just appear or enter.
Officials also said the county hopes to benefit from a change to the White House, which begins Wednesday.
Among those benefits, they said, was more transparency about how many doses would come. This will help with long-term planning, said Ferrer.
Under President-elect Joe Biden’s plan, released on Thursday, about $ 20 billion would be allocated to a more disciplined focus on vaccination, in addition to the $ 8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden called for the creation of mass vaccination centers and the sending of mobile units to areas of difficult access. The result, he hopes, will be 100 million vaccines administered in 100 days.
But local county spokesmen said they were preparing the sites for a new wave of population to come and get their photos.
Although supplies are limited – as well as testing at the beginning of the pandemic – officials are looking to increase capacity over time, passing it on to the general population in the coming months, said the director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Management Office. Angeles, Kevin McGowan.
At first, demand for the vaccine apparently exceeded the online marking system’s ability to handle the load. Shortly after county officials formally announced the nominations website on Tuesday afternoon, it broke. County officials announced on Twitter that the site and the hotline were “receiving thousands of calls and users and experiencing technical difficulties.” County officials said they were working to resolve the problems.
Meanwhile, Long Beach officials, who were able to move at a faster pace than the county, asked to partner with the county’s Department of Health to absorb neighboring cities, including Signal Hill, Paramount and Lakewood, to deal with the distribution of vaccinations in these cities, said Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia on Tuesday.
“We have the organizational structure to do this,” said Garcia. “We just need approval from LA County and their additional vaccines and we will put them right on the program.”
“What we are trying to do,” said Garcia, “is to distribute vaccines as quickly as possible.”
Like all clear varied developments, Joni Ejercito, who came to the Cal State Northridge mega-site in the San Fernando Valley on a strong and stormy Tuesday, said he would be patient but attuned. She couldn’t have a chance on Tuesday. But she’ll be back, she said.
“I am a health professional. I am elderly I need to travel, ”she said. “It is for the general good. Not just me. “