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Teachers and workers in child care, emergency services, and food and agriculture will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines in Los Angeles County starting Monday, though officials warn the pace will be slowed by a limited supply.
Nearly 1.2 million people fall into these newly approved categories, according to county estimates. They will join about 2.2 million LA County residents already eligible for vaccination – those who work in the healthcare industry, live in long-term care facilities, or are 65 years of age or older.
“Opening up eligibility to more essential worker groups will save more lives and speed our recovery,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement on Sunday.
The county has so far administered 2,049,666 doses of the vaccine (first and second doses), according to the Times immunization tracker.
Newly eligible residents will be able to book appointments at city-run immunization sites from Monday, the mayor’s office said, but only a small number of first-dose appointments will be available this week at the Pierce. Middle School.
The 70,000 doses of Moderna vaccine that the city expects to receive on Monday will mainly go to its six mass vaccination sites, open Tuesday through Saturday, to be administered as a second dose, Garcetti’s office said. Appointments for the second vaccine were automatically scheduled for people who received their first dose at a city-run site between February 1 and 6.
An additional 7,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, due Monday, will be provided as the first doses as part of the city’s mobile vaccination program, which aims to deliver vaccines directly to worst-affected neighborhoods, officials said.
The program is expected to triple the number of doses given this week, from 4,000 to 12,000, through clinics offering first doses in Baldwin Hills, South Park, Highland Park, Panorama City, Westlake and Pacoima and clinics offering second doses in Baldwin Hills, to the south. Park and Vermont Vista, the city said.
Supply remains the main obstacle to distributing more vaccines, Garcetti’s office said, noting that last week the city administered more than 90,000 doses, a peak but still only 68% of the program’s capacity. .
Like many states, California has distributed the vaccine in stages, establishing general criteria for determining who can be inoculated at each stage. The exact way this played out varied by city and county, with officials facing tough choices when it comes to who should be prioritized to receive a limited share of the vaccine.
Long Beach, which has its own health department and receives its own vaccine supply, began immunizing food workers and educators in January at area clinics. More than 3,000 restaurant workers, market workers, cooks and other food industry workers are expected to be vaccinated at a clinic at the Long Beach Convention Center on Friday, the city said.
In San Francisco, education, child care, and food and agriculture workers were able to be vaccinated starting Friday.
Orange County last week began giving doses to workers in education, child care, food and agriculture, saying it would spend 30% of its allowance on workers these sectors, as well as those of the emergency services; the remaining 70% goes to residents aged 65 or over. Seniors and first responders who work in high-risk communities can be vaccinated since mid-January.
San Bernardino County also extended immunizations to educators last week and Ventura County said it will begin immunizing teachers, food and agriculture workers, and emergency service workers. .
San Luis Obispo County will begin scheduling vaccinations for some local educators and educators starting Monday; they will be contacted by their employer for an appointment and should not try to make one themselves, the county said.
California and other states have experienced political discord over vaccination priorities, and leaders have said such clashes are inevitable.
Governor Andy Beshear (D-Ky.) Said his state was set to become the first to fully immunize all educators, but the process has at times been controversial. “We pushed our teachers to the fore, bringing them up faster than the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] or other states have done it, ”the governor said in an interview with CBS’s“ Face the Nation ”.
“Everything is difficult in COVID, even the concept of what an essential worker is – is one person more essential than another?”
When it comes to educators, Beshear said, Kentucky was driven by science as well as social need.
“It was a development for our children academically, emotionally and socially,” he said. “We made that call from the start – we stuck to it.”
The increases in eligibility come as public health authorities in California and the country continue to report declines in new cases and hospitalizations.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Sunday recorded 1,064 new cases of the coronavirus and 107 related deaths. There were 1,578 COVID-19 patients in county hospitals on Saturday, a drop of nearly 50% from two weeks earlier.
Still, experts say it is essential to remain cautious.
President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday that even with encouraging news of declining national cases and accelerating vaccine rollouts, some states, including California, are a source of concern due to emerging variants of the virus.
Appearing on “Face the Nation”, Fauci said that “we will be” victorious in the fight against the virus, but “we are not there yet, especially with the variants circulating in various parts of the country, such as in California. and New York. “
In California, this includes the British variant, which spreads more easily than its predecessors and may be more deadly, as well as a local variant which may have the ability to escape antibodies generated by vaccines or a previous infection.
The presence of the variants, combined with the slowness of vaccinations due to supply constraints and fatigue in the face of public health rules, raise fears for some of a potential “fourth wave” of new cases.
The possibility has sparked a race to vaccinate as many people as possible before one flare triggers another wave of suffering and gives the variants more opportunities to mutate. Authorities hope to speed up efforts considerably with the arrival of a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson that requires only one dose, unlike Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and which does not need to be kept at such high temperatures. cold.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday and recommended by a CDC committee on Sunday. Senior officials in the Biden administration have said they are delighted to add a third approved vaccine to the country’s arsenal.
“The bottom line here is that we have a safe and very effective vaccine,” said an official, who requested anonymity when discussing the administration’s plans.
Another official said nearly 4 million doses of Johnson & Johnson will be distributed as of Tuesday.
However, this represents all of the company’s inventory and ramping up production may take time. An additional 16 million doses are expected to be shipped by the end of March. Delivery will be “spotty,” the official said, but “we are getting the doses out as quickly as possible.”
Fauci, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union”, called the approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “very good news.” If he was still waiting for a vaccine, he said, “I will take any vaccine I have as quickly as possible.”
Johnson & Johnson’s approval means that “we now have three important tools” to fight the virus through vaccinations, Fauci said.
CDC director Rochelle P. Walensky agrees, saying in a statement that the approval comes “at a potentially pivotal time.”
“The latest CDC data suggests that recent declines in COVID-19 cases could stagnate and potentially level off at still very high numbers,” Walensky said. “This is why it is so essential that we remain vigilant and systematically take all the mitigation measures that we know are helping to stop the spread of COVID-19 as we move towards mass vaccination.”
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