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In the coming weeks, Los Angeles County’s supply of COVID-19 vaccine will tighten due to an expected shortage of vaccines manufactured by Johnson & Johnson – just as people with underlying health conditions will become eligible vaccinations.
“The next two weeks we won’t get any Johnson & Johnson [vaccine doses]. It’s a manufacturing production problem, ”LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday, warning that the vaccine supply in March will be tight.
California is still in the process of finalizing the list of medical conditions that will qualify people under the age of 65 for COVID-19 shooting starting Monday, Ferrer said.
A state bulletin last month said that starting March 15, healthcare providers can use their judgment to immunize people between the ages of 16 and 64 considered to be at high risk of serious illness or death. by COVID-19 due to health problems such as cancer, chronic kidney disease, lung disease, weakened immune system following an organ transplant, Down syndrome, pregnancy, sickle cell anemia, heart problems, severe obesity and diabetes. type 2.
Ferrer predicts that hundreds of thousands more people in LA County with underlying conditions will become eligible for the vaccine.
“Our numbers are likely to drop slightly on the number of doses we receive, but we’re going to have a lot more people who will be eligible on Monday,” Ferrer said. “So again, I feel bad to always ask everyone to be a little patient, because even if it’s your turn, it will still be difficult to get appointments.
Ferrer suggested that people with underlying illnesses contact their health care providers to ask how to get vaccinated. “The easiest way for you to get vaccinated will be to go to your provider, or if your provider has an agreement with a network, to get vaccinated,” Ferrer said.
Growing discontent among state county officials who are forced to use the state’s flawed My Turn appointment system to manage vaccinations is adding to the complexity of vaccination efforts.
LA County Director of Health Services Dr. Christina Ghaly said adopting the My Turn system to manage vaccinations from the county’s public hospital system would disrupt her agency’s vaccination efforts, resulting in inefficiency and difficulty. .
Ghaly said his department will continue to use its own electronic health record system to manage immunizations and then upload information to a state immunization registry. Switching to the My Turn system would force clerks to enter data twice – once in the county health system database and again in the My Turn system, she noted.
Ghaly called My Turn a “totally parallel and useless system”.
Ferrer supported Ghaly’s concerns. “Please don’t add a layer of complexity to healthcare providers who are already doing a good job,” Ferrer said.
The My Turn system has also been accused of previously relying on access codes that were distributed to people in underserved communities to receive vaccines. The codes were leaked, causing people from richer, predominantly white communities to show up at vaccination sites in low-income and predominantly non-white neighborhoods, undermining efforts to target areas the poorest with vaccinations. Partly as a result, people living in the wealthiest communities in California received double the doses of the vaccine from those residing in the poorest neighborhoods.
One solution offered by the state was to use individualized codes, but Ferrer said that was not a great option either.
“If you are a [healthcare] , do you know how difficult it is to call all of your patients to give them individual codes so that they can sign up for an appointment, rather than just giving them an appointment? Ferrer said at the Los Angeles County Supervisory Board meeting on Tuesday. “No one really wants to issue individual codes to their patients so they can access My Turn with a secure appointment.”
The My Turn system has been flawed in other ways – including sending thousands of residents to vaccination sites in the wrong county, where they are told they cannot get vaccinated.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger said San Bernardino County officials told her 5,000 LA County residents showed up for the shot because the My Turn site inadvertently sent them.
Ferrer said it was “the biggest issue for every county right now” because My Turn is not set up to recognize geographic boundaries that would prevent residents from signing up for shots outside their home. own county.
This led people to travel long distances, believing that they would be vaccinated. only to be hijacked, says Ferrer.
“People are very angry, and that’s understandable, but the [vaccine] the allocations are made according to the population of the counties, and in times of shortage we have to make sure that we are able to take care of the people who live and work in that county, and this has not been settled in My Turn, said Ferrer.
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