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By 
Spencer Custodio |
As Orange County officials continue to promote a broad coronavirus vaccination program, questions remain on how many doses will actually go into the county from state allowances.
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State public health officials have yet to answer questions about a timeline or potential schedule of the number of expected CO doses.
Governor Gavin Newsom did not have a clear answer at a press conference on Friday.
“Our resolution is to have all existing doses administered in this condition as quickly and efficiently as possible. And we still have a lot of work to do in this space, ”Newsom said, adding that the state has received around 3 million doses.
“We have hundreds of thousands more that we plan to receive,” Newsom said, but did not say when the vaccines would arrive.
Meanwhile, county health official Dr Clayton Chau said the county is trying to set up five vaccination supersites in the county with the hope that each site will vaccinate 8,000 people per day – a total of 40,000 people once the OC can obtain the necessary vaccine stocks.
That’s 280,000 doses needed per week to make the sites fully operational.
Disneyland was the first of five locations to open this week as part of an elaborate public relations rollout.
Yet the website and mobile phone app used by Orange County to register people for vaccinations, Othena, has been in accidents overloaded servers due to high demand from residents and people who work in OC.
Although the registration site and app were sporadically down throughout the week, they were up and running again by Friday morning.
Questions and concerns have been raised by some people with disabilities who cannot make it to Disneyland to get vaccinated.
“It’s just not possible for people who have mobility issues. That’s wonderful. I have called the health department several times, ”said Amy Applebaum, a disabled 59-year-old Fullerton resident.
Although Applebaum does not qualify for the first rounds of the two-part vaccinations, she is concerned about how she will get the vaccines once it is her turn.
“When I continue to raise people with disabilities, they just don’t know what to tell me,” she says. “That’s wonderful. It’s like we don’t exist.
Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who has been involved in efforts to roll out the vaccine in the county, 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 them to be patient, but to check with their own doctor and let them know that pharmacies are actually vaccinating people, ”Chaffee said in a telephone interview on Friday.
He also said there were mobile vaccination efforts.
“But they don’t have a lot (vaccine supply),” Chaffee said.
Applebaum said her doctor didn’t know how to get her vaccinated.
“They tell you to call your doctors, the doctors don’t know anything. It’s all beyond comprehension, ”she says. “I have a letter from St. Jude saying I will not survive COVID.”
Questions are also raised by people who have relatives in nursing homes.
An OC resident said he had been trying to get his mother vaccinated for the past year, but he is not sure when he will arrive at the nursing home.
“I can tell you it’s been very disturbing, terrifying to a certain extent. There was some communication about it and then it kind of stopped, ”the resident said in a telephone interview on Friday. “I thought they were going to get it by the end of the year.”
The resident did not want to be named because he feared it would compromise the care of his mother.
“So both in LA County and in the Inland Empire, I know someone whose parents have been vaccinated. Some time ago, ”they said. “It’s scary for anyone who is at high risk and is in the front row.”
Healthcare workers and residents of nursing homes are the top priority.
OC, along with federal and state public health officials, propelled all people 65 and over to number one earlier this week.
“The most at risk and most vulnerable population – for them not to have the vaccines and then for them to be open for 65 and over, I find it outrageous and almost criminal,” the resident said.
State and local health departments have partnered with Walgreens and CVS to distribute vaccines to nursing homes.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Chau said he was not sure exactly what was going on with vaccinations in nursing homes.
“There is a federal allowance that comes to pharmacies that vaccinate long-term care facilities and skilled nursing facilities,” Chau said. “And we at the county level don’t have access to what those levels are.”
He said they were trying to look into the matter.
“From the county perspective, we would like to see what the total doses are allocated to different entities,” Chau said.
While county leadership has not officially announced the other four locations, Huntington Beach City Manager Oliver Chi told Voice of OC last week that county officials are watching Knott’s Berry Farm, Orange County Fairgrounds, Great Park and Soka University.
Chi sits on the county vaccine task force.
Meanwhile, bodies pile up as county officials try to overcome vaccination barriers and people scramble to book a vaccination appointment.
The Health Care Agency reported 82 new deaths on Friday – a record daily increase so far.
Recently reported deaths can go back several weeks due to reporting delays.
The virus has now killed 2,277 people out of 205,911 confirmed cases, according to the county Health care agency.
The agency has reported 376 people killed by the virus since the start of the year.
The virus has already killed more than three times as many people as the flu on an annual average.
For the background, Orange County has recorded an average of around 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 of 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 in November, according to the state’s latest available data.
It is a difficult virus for the medical community to fight off, as some people have no symptoms, but can still spread it. Others have mild symptoms, such as fatigue and a slight fever.
Others end up in intensive care units for days and weeks before recovering, while others end up dying from the virus.
Hospitalizations have declined slightly since last week.
2,101 people were hospitalized on Friday, including 534 in intensive care units.
But OC maintained a high average of new daily cases.
The Health Care Agency reported 3,158 additional new cases on Friday.
And OC has averaged about 3,500 new cases per day over the past week.
State public health officials estimate that about 12% of all newly infected people end up being hospitalized within three weeks.
That means more than 2,900 more people could be hospitalized in the coming weeks, as hospitals release stabilized patients as quickly as possible.
CO nurses hold hands as many people die alone because families are not allowed into anti-virus units due to hospital protocols.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, RN Choi Bagnol, who works at Kaiser Medical Center in Irvine, said watching people die alone was “heartbreaking.”
“I believe that no one should die alone. We have made sure that a patient is in comfort care and waiting to go through, we stay there while their heart rate drops. We stay there and hold their hands as 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 are the latest figures on viruses in Orange County from county data:
Infections | Hospitalizations and Deaths | City by city data | Demography
Spencer Custodio is a Voice of OC reporter. You can reach him at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio
Journalist Nick Gerda contributed to this story.
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