It was a weekend of frustration and confusion for many Californians aged 65 and over who tried to figure out how to get the coronavirus vaccine.
The state announced last week that it was opening vaccination for the elderly. But it soon became clear that, in many counties, such injections would be scarce, in part because there were still many doctors and first responders in line in front of them.
Some people 65 and older were vaccinated at retail stores that had supplies available. But many others were unable to find a location that offered schedules.
Here’s how things are in Southern California:
Los Angeles County
The county’s Department of Public Health issued on Saturday a broad appeal to licensed health care professionals – including doctors, osteopathy doctors, medical assistants, nurses, licensed vocational nurses, dentists and pharmacists – to volunteer to vaccinate other health professionals during 10-hour unpaid shifts at five “mega” distribution locations.
The venues are scheduled to open on Tuesday at the Pomona Fairplex, the Forum in Inglewood, Cal State Northridge, the LA County Education Office in Downey and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, with hours available every day until 14 February, the county said.
In addition, the Los Angeles City Dodger Stadium vaccine site started administering doses Friday.
On Thursday, health professionals in LA County received more than 279,000 doses of the vaccine, including more than 219,000 first doses and more than 60,000 second doses, officials said, but estimated that some 450,000 health professionals still needed to be vaccinated.
County public health officials said they expected all qualified health workers to receive their first dose in the next two weeks and to move on to the next vaccination phase in early February. Those eligible for the next phase include people aged 65 and over, as well as those who work in education, day care, emergency services or food and agriculture and face risk of exposure.
Dr. Paul Simon, director of science for the county of LA, said during a press conference on Friday that the team of the five mass vaccination sites launched in the county would be trained to follow the flow of traffic on the site and only open the required number of bottles.
Each vial contains about five or six doses of vaccine. Once opened, the time to use or lose is reduced to about six hours.
In the event of a surplus of vaccine, Simon said the team was being instructed to contact local communities to first offer the doses to the most vulnerable.
“We want to prioritize high-risk groups,” he said.
The remaining vaccine can also be administered to local volunteers or other people in the community to make use of all doses.
“No vaccine is being thrown away,” said Simon. “There have been isolated reports of the loss of some vaccines at the end of the day. … This is tragic. We don’t want that to happen. We have protocols in place to try to avoid this. But certainly large amounts of vaccine are not being lost ”.
Long Beach, which has its own public health department, moved on to the next round of vaccinations on Friday, with Mayor Robert Garcia and other top city officials receiving the vaccine. Other newly qualified individuals include police officers and people aged 65 and over.
And this weekend, some older adults were vaccinated in Long Beach.
This happened after the city vaccinated some 15,000 health workers and residents of long-term care facilities, Garcia said in a press release.
This week, Long Beach will open clinics to vaccinate grocery workers and scheduled clinics to vaccinate educators the following week, the statement said.
Orange county
Orange County opened vaccination for residents age 65 and older and first responders working in high-risk communities, as well as health professionals.
The county last week opened a large-scale vaccine distribution center at Disneyland and said it plans to open four more. But the sheer volume of people trying to get an appointment quickly overwhelmed the system, county supervisor Andrew Do said last week. He encouraged people to keep trying.
The vaccination site, along with two other minors, at the beginning of the week was overloaded by people who came without an appointment, which led them to “close effectively” for a while on Tuesday, the county said.
The platform for scheduling new appointments, Othena.com, was being updated regularly to address technical issues, said Jessica Good, manager of public information for the county health department.
More than 256,000 people registered through the site by Saturday – an average of 12,000 records per hour – and more than 30,000 of them have been vaccinated, she said. Good added that more consultations would be made available as the county received more vaccine.
Orange County has about 450,000 residents aged 65 and over, in addition to 250,000 health workers and health workers and first responders, but has only received 170,000 doses so far, Good said. Of these, 80% went to hospitals and major health care providers, she said.
Inner empire
Other counties, including Riverside, have also started vaccinating those 65 and older and essential workers in certain sectors.
But there are reports that nominations have been difficult to obtain.
Around 4pm on Wednesday, Riverside County opened 5,600 appointments for vaccination clinics Thursday through Sunday at Corona High School, Heritage High School in Menifee, San Gorgonio Middle School in Beaumont, at the Indio and at Diamond Stadium in Lake Elsinore. The Diamond Stadium clinic was exclusively for people aged 65 and over.
All appointments were made until 7 pm, said spokeswoman Brooke Federico.
On Friday, the county made 11,000 more consultations available until January 22, and vacancies were filled in about two hours, she said.
In addition, the county said it received only enough vaccine from the state to cover clinics in operation over the weekend.
“At the moment, we have 14,346 doses in our hands as public health, and that’s just enough to get past the vaccine clinics we planned for Sunday,” said Kim Saruwatari, Riverside County’s director of public health, on Friday in a live broadcast meeting with county officials. “And by the end of Sunday, we should be very close to leaving the vaccine as a public health department.”
An additional 100,479 doses were administered or sent to healthcare professionals to be administered in the next few days, she said. In contrast, the county estimates that more than 700,000 residents are currently eligible to receive the vaccine.
Saruwatari said the county normally receives weekly shipments from the state of about 35,000 to 40,000 doses, but the distribution is not accurate or regular.
“And this is one of the challenges that makes planning very difficult,” she said. “We don’t know when the vaccine will arrive with certainty, and we don’t know how much we will receive at any time with any level of certainty.”
San Diego County
Vaccine eligibility nearly doubled in San Diego County last week. The offer, on the other hand, does not.
The county has focused on vaccinating 620,000 health professionals and nursing home residents who fall into the state’s highest priority vaccination level. New state and federal guidelines mean that almost 500,000 San Diegans aged 65 and over are also eligible for a vaccine – assuming your health care provider has the doses.
This generated considerable confusion. On Thursday, a Ralphs spokesman told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the supermarket chain has been given the green light to vaccinate residents 65 and older in its pharmacies and that interested parties can apply for online appointments.
Dr. Linh Lee, director of pharmacy, health and wellness at Ralphs, clarified on Friday that this was not true. Vaccination for older patients started on Wednesday and was stopped quickly.
“There’s a lot of confusion,” said Lee. “Patients don’t know what they should be doing.”
Healthcare systems are also struggling, with systems like Scripps, Sharp and Kaiser Permanente saying they still don’t have enough vaccine to immunize patients.
UCSD Health, which inoculated 120 elderly patients on Thursday, is also concerned about the supply. The healthcare system has about 120,000 patients aged 65 and over, according to Dr. Marlene Millen, and often does not know when to receive the vaccine and how much until a day or two before the deadline.
“It would be nice to have a stable supply and make plans,” said Millen.
Jonathan Wosen of the San Diego Union-Tribune contributed to this report.