In 
Spencer Custodio |
While Orange County officials continue to promote a massive coronavirus vaccination program, issues remain about how many doses will actually flow to the county from state allocations.
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State public health officials have yet to answer questions about a potential timeline or schedule for how many doses are expected to reach the OC.
Governor Gavin Newsom did not have a clear answer at a news conference on Friday.
“Our decision is to ensure that all existing doses that are in this state are administered as quickly and efficiently as possible. And we still have a lot of work to do in that space, ”said Newsom, adding that the state received about 3 million doses.
“We have hundreds of thousands more that we hope to receive,” said Newsom, but did not say when vaccines would be arriving.
Meanwhile, county health officer Dr. Clayton Chau said the county is trying to establish five vaccination super sites around the county with the hope that each location will vaccinate 8,000 people a day – a total of 40,000 people once the OC can obtain the necessary vaccine stocks.
280,000 doses required per week to make the sites fully operational.
Disneyland was the first of five locations to open this week in an elaborate public relations launch.
However, the website and mobile app used by Orange County to register people for vaccination, Othena, was plagued by accidents of overloaded servers due to the very high demand from residents and people who work at the OC.
Although the website and the registration application were unavailable sporadically during the week, it was back up and running on Friday morning.
Questions and concerns were raised by some people with disabilities who cannot go to Disneyland to get vaccinated.
“It is simply not possible for people with mobility problems. It’s impressive. I called the health department several times, ”said Amy Applebaum, a 59-year-old Fullerton resident with a disability.
Although Applebaum does not qualify for the initial rounds of the two-part vaccines, she worries about how she will get the injections when her turn comes.
“When I continue to educate the disabled, they just have no idea what to say to me,” she said. “It’s impressive. It’s as if we don’t exist. ”
Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who participated in the county’s vaccine deployment efforts, said officials are aware of the problem.
“It’s very difficult at the moment, we just don’t have enough for everyone. So we ask you to be patient, but consult your doctor and let them know that pharmacies are vaccinating people, ”said Chaffee in a telephone interview on Friday.
He also said that there are mobile vaccination efforts.
“But they don’t have much (vaccine stock),” said Chaffee.
Applebaum said his doctor does not know how to vaccinate her.
“They send you to call your doctor, the doctors don’t know anything. The whole thing is beyond comprehension, ”she said. “I received a letter from St. Jude saying that I will not survive COVID.”
There are also questions being raised by people who have parents in nursing homes.
A resident of OC said he has been trying to give his mother a vaccine since last year, but he is not sure when she will arrive at the asylum.
“I can say that it has been very worrying, terrifying to a certain extent. There was some communication about it, so it kind of stopped, ”said the resident in a telephone interview on Friday. “I thought they would make it by the end of the year.”
The resident did not want to be identified because she feared that this could harm the mother’s care.
“So, in both LA County and the Inland Empire, I know someone whose parents were vaccinated. A while ago, ”they said. “It is scary for everyone who is at high risk and is the first line.”
Health professionals and residents of nursing homes are the top priority.
The OC, along with federal and state public health officials, placed everyone aged 65 and over in the upper echelon earlier this week.
“The highest risk, the most vulnerable population – for them not to have the vaccines and then to be opened to people over 65, I find this outrageous and almost criminal,” said the resident.
State and local health departments have partnered with Walgreens and CVS to distribute vaccines in nursing homes.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Chau said he did not know exactly what was happening with vaccines in the nursing home.
“There is a federal grant that reaches pharmacies that are vaccinating long-term care institutions and specialized wards,” said Chau. “And we, at the county level, don’t have access to what those levels are.”
He said that they are working to examine the problem.
“From the county’s point of view, we would like to see what the total doses are being allocated to the various entities,” said Chau.
Although the county leadership has not officially announced the other four locations, Oliver Chi, city manager for Huntington Beach, told the Voice of OC last week that county officials are looking Knott’s Berry Farm, Orange County Fairgrounds, The Great Park and Soka University.
Chi is part of the county’s vaccination task force.
In the meantime, bodies are piling up as county officials try to deal with vaccination obstacles and people are struggling to register a vaccination appointment.
On Friday, the Public Health Agency reported 82 new deaths – a record daily increase so far.
Recently reported deaths may extend to weeks due to delays in notification.
The virus has killed 2,277 people out of 205,911 confirmed cases, according to the county Health Agency.
The agency reported 376 people killed by the virus since the beginning of the year.
The virus has killed more than three times as many people as the flu on an annual average.
For context, Orange County has averaged about 20,000 deaths per year since 2016, including 543 annual deaths from influenza, 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 surpassed its annual average of 20,000 deaths, with 21,110 deaths by November, according to the latest state data available.
It is a difficult virus to be fought by the medical community because some people have no symptoms, but they can still spread it. Others experience mild symptoms, such as fatigue and moderate fever.
Others end up in the ICU for days and weeks before escaping, while others die from the virus.
Hospitalizations have declined slightly since last week.
As of Friday, 2,101 people have been hospitalized, including 534 in intensive care units.
But the OC has maintained a high average of new daily cases.
The health agency reported an additional 3,158 new cases on Friday.
And the OC has an average of approximately 3,500 new cases per day in the past week.
State public health officials estimate that about 12% of all infected people end up hospitalized in three weeks.
This means that more than 2,900 more people may be hospitalized in the coming weeks, as hospitals are discharging stabilized patients as quickly as possible.
OC nurses are holding hands while many people die alone because families cannot enter virus units due to hospital protocols.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Nurse Choi Bagnol, who works at the Kaiser medical center in Irvine, said that seeing people die alone is “heartbreaking”.
“I believe that no one should die alone. We have reached a point where the patient is in comfort treatment and is waiting to pass, we stay there while his heart rate decreases. We stand there and hold your hands while they take their last breath. “
For more details on the COVID-19 vaccine in Orange County, see our Voice of OC information page: http://bit.ly/occovidvaccine.
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
Reporter Nick Gerda contributed to this story.