[ad_1]
Despite a frustrating supply line, the rollout of coronavirus vaccines for people 65 and older in Los Angeles County will begin on Wednesday, January 20. Seniors will be able to start making reservations to receive their first vaccines as early as this afternoon, officials said. said Tuesday Jan. 19.
Reservations can be made by visiting VaccinateLACounty.com or by calling the new COVID information hotline at (833) 540-0473, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
The new clarity on the rollout is emerging following pressure from the public and the county watchdog to get the vaccine into the arms of people over 65 years of age earlier.
“I want to encourage patience,” said Barbara Ferrer, LA County Public Health chief, as she and other local officials briefed the public at the Pomona Fairplex, which is home to one of five sites of vaccination giants open Tuesday across the county. “We don’t have enough COVID-19 vaccine for everyone, and that includes people 65 and over. But we will get there.
At this point, the first priority – known as statewide Phase 1A Tier 1 – has gone to the county’s 800,000 healthcare workers, staff and residents of skilled nursing facilities. But now the pool will be extended to seniors.
Concerns remain about the county’s sporadic vaccine supply. Officials said they were unable to determine whether it will withstand requests for inoculation from the most populous county in the state, where the population 65 and over stands at 1.3 million.
It is entirely up to the federal government, they said, but they hoped communication would improve with the inauguration of a new administration.
At this point, there are only enough doses to get through this week, officials said.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the county reported 186 new deaths and 7,902 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the totals to 14,122 and 1,031,874, respectively.
The number of hospitalizations, while remaining at alarming levels in overcrowded hospitals, continued to decline very gradually. The state dashboard listed 7,523 people treated in hospitals, up from 7,322 on Monday, including 24% in intensive care.
County statistics did not include the latest figures for Pasadena and Long Beach, cities that run their own health services.
Pasadena has recorded 69 new cases, bringing its total since the start of the pandemic to 9,408; the city’s death toll remained at 192.
Long Beach reported the latest figures on Friday, Jan.15. As of Saturday, Jan. 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 update for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Wednesday’s report. , officials said.
The county has received more than 685,000 doses, Ferrer said. As of Tuesday, more than 348,000 vaccines had been administered. Over 271,000 first doses and over 77,000 second doses have been administered, she added.
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the county expected to receive 168,000 additional doses. However: “We are not yet sure of our allocations for next week,” Ferrer said.
Initially, authorities had hoped to cross this population by the end of the month and start vaccinating people over 65 and over in early February.
But as other municipalities, public health departments, private providers and some clinics have started to scale up more quickly, local authorities have started to make more efforts to get the elderly vaccinated.
Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger urged health officials to open the vaccine rollout on Monday.
“As the largest county in the country, I appreciate the massive commitment it will be to twice vaccinating 10 million people,” Hahn said in a letter. “However, the vaccine deployment was not as fast as it needed to be.”
Hahn said she was disappointed the county had only been able to administer about half of the vaccine doses received so far. Across California, the story has been similar, with the state receiving about 3.5 million doses, but only being able to deliver about a third of that number.
Barger also called for flexibility in the initial plan.
“Governor @GavinNewsom has encouraged all counties to start vaccinating residents 65 years of age and older so that we can protect our residents most vulnerable to this virus. LA County must follow the state’s lead without further delay, ”Hahn tweeted.
On Monday evening, the president of the council, supervisors Hilda Solis, had signed a decree requiring that the vaccine be made available to people over 65.
And on Tuesday, the board met behind closed doors on the matter – a prelude to Tuesday’s announcement.
Solis said the Council simply cannot accept that a population so humiliated by the pandemic does not have the chance to get immunized immediately.
“It’s a matter of fairness,” she said. “The elderly have been unfairly affected by the virus. They stayed home for months, isolated.
Supervisor Janice Hahn echoed Solis: “Over 70 percent of the people we lose to COVID-19 are over 65. We need to vaccinate this group and protect them from this virus as quickly as possible. “
Solis said the council was considering the change in the past two weeks, but was spurred on by Newsom’s announcement last week that the state’s vaccines could be open to seniors.
As the county public health worked on its initial strategy – to finish health workers, then go to the elderly – Ferrer said its service remained flexible.
Solis’ decree on Monday night did not change that, she said.
“I don’t see this at all as a cancellation from the public health department,” Ferrer said. “We’re working very closely with Supervisor Solis and all of the supervisors to come up with a plan that benefits everyone in this county, and really rolls out the vaccine as quickly as possible to those in the priority groups.
Ferrer said the health workers’ inoculation plan was “robust” enough to allow officials to move to a plan that integrates the remaining health workers who need vaccines and an older population that needs the vaccines. urgently. And they hope to build on public-private partnerships with groups such as Kaiser-Permanante.
The surge from supervisors has amplified the recent confusion – and frustration – among older people asking for the vaccine.
Some of the frustration was evident on Tuesday morning as some older people looking for vaccines were denied some of the five newly opened mass vaccination sites that only inoculated frontline healthcare workers.
Some did not know how to register. Some thought they might just introduce themselves or come in.
Officials also said the county hoped to benefit from a change in the White House, which begins on Wednesday.
Among those benefits, they said, was greater transparency about the number of doses to come. This will help with longer-term planning, Ferrer said.
Under President-elect Joe Biden’s plan, released on Thursday, around $ 20 billion would be allocated for a more disciplined focus on immunization, in addition to the roughly $ 8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden called for the establishment of mass vaccination centers and the dispatch of mobile units to hard-to-reach areas. The result, he hopes, will be 100 million vaccines administered in 100 days.
But county spokespersons there said they were preparing the sites for a new wave of people coming to collect their photos.
While supplies are limited – as are testing, at the onset of the pandemic – officials are looking to increase capacity over time, to move to the general population in the months to come, the office manager said. Los Angeles County Emergency Management Kevin McGowan.
At first, the demand for the vaccine apparently exceeded the ability of the online appointment system to handle the load. Shortly after county officials officially announced the date website on Tuesday afternoon, it crashed. County officials announced on Twitter that the website and hotline “are receiving thousands of calls and users and experiencing technical difficulties.” County officials said they were working to resolve the issues.
Meanwhile, officials in Long Beach, which were able to move at a faster pace than the county, asked to partner with the county health department to absorb nearby towns including Signal Hill, Paramount and Lakewood , in order to manage the distribution of vaccines for these towns. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said Tuesday.
“We have the organizational structure to make it happen,” Garcia said. “We just need the LA County OK and additional vaccines from them and we’ll put them right into the program.”
“What we’re trying to do,” Garcia said, “is distribute the vaccines as soon as possible.”
As all the varied developments cleared up, Joni Ejercito, who visited the Cal State Northridge mega site in the San Fernando Valley on a crisp and windy Tuesday, said she would be patient but attentive. . . But she will come back, she said.
“I am a health care worker. I am old. I need to travel, ”she says. “It’s for the general good. Not just myself.
[ad_2]
Source link