[ad_1]
By 
Spencer Custodio |
Orange County’s demand for the coronavirus vaccine is overwhelming the current registration system that allows people to make an appointment to be vaccinated, causing confusion and anger among some residents.
Editor’s Note: As the only non-profit, non-partisan newsroom in Orange County, Voice of OC brings you the best and most comprehensive local coronavirus news absolutely free. No advertising, no paywalls. We need your help. Please make a tax deductible donation today to support your local news.
“The website is not user friendly at all and I think it’s going to crash. You think in 2021 we could put our whatchamacallit together. We’ve had a year to prepare for this, ”JoAnn Arvizu said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Arvizu, a 71-year-old Huntington Beach resident, said she has been trying to secure a date for herself and her 77-year-old husband since the website launched earlier this week.
“I know how to run a computer and yesterday he asked us to log in and give a password and they said everything was ready. And then you go to log in and it said reset your password. This has happened to my husband six times, ”said Arvizu.
She expressed frustration at not being able to get some sort of confirmation and the apparent errors from the website.
“They didn’t even ask for an email address to notify you. You need to continue on their website to find out if you have an appointment. Then it says schedule a date … you click on it and it says update your profile. Well I just put my profile information in there yesterday and you want me to update it? »Said Arvizu.
She is not alone.
Dozens of elderly residents have voiced almost identical concerns to Voice of OC all week.
Arvizu compared the situation to the famous Abbott and Costello baseball routine.
“At the end of the page, it says to reschedule your appointment or cancel your appointment. Well, I don’t have a date. Who is the first here? I’m so angry I don’t even want to do it. But I will keep trying, ”said Arvizu.
Othena, the website and app for registering people for vaccination, was overloaded this week, causing registration delays.
“We are currently experiencing exceptionally high volumes of traffic to our website,” the Othena website said Thursday morning.
Thursday afternoon he was back.
OC public health officials are trying to open five immunization supersites to distribute up to 40,000 vaccines per day by appointment – no appointments allowed. Each site should vaccinate up to 8,000 people per day.
The first began with a major public relations deployment at Disneyland this week, after county officials said on Tuesday they would begin vaccinating people aged 65 and older.
Yet county officials were apparently not ready for such a massive response.
“The number of people trying to get an appointment is so high that the system can be overloaded. As you know the server can only handle a limited number of calls and sometimes it crashes. Be patient. If it’s not available today, please try again in the future, ”Chairman of Supervisors Andrew Do said at a press conference Wednesday at Disneyland.
Do said he solves the problem by trying to get more bandwidth to handle the large volume of recordings.
He also said the decision to open the Disneyland supersite was an effort to prove to state officials that Orange County is capable of mass vaccination so they can get more vaccines on the road.
“This is part of the intention to show the state that Orange County has a mechanism and process in place to deliver the vaccine efficiently and quickly,” Do said. “The state guides a lot of its action based on the performance of the county. And with the vaccination effort, it’s no different.
It’s unclear when the other four supersites will open.
About 280,000 vaccines per week are needed to maximize the five supersites.
Orange County Medical Association president Dr Jason Cord said that while he understands the community’s frustration with not being able to enroll, it at least shows waves of people are ready to go. take the vaccine.
“We know that at the start, the Othena site will be overloaded. We’re going to go through this – I recommend people keep checking… Every time it fills up, it’s a big group of people getting vaccinated. In some ways, it’s encouraging to see that we have less hesitation and more enthusiasm about the vaccine, ”Cord said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Cord said he personally understood the frustration.
“I have two parents who are 80 and over. So I help them access the app, ”Cord said. “It’s a challenge because we all know the website has been flooded.”
Vaccination clinics for healthcare workers were closed earlier this week because walk-in people flocked to them hoping to get the shot.
“The three existing in the county [vaccination] sites were overwhelmed with walk-in people today, effectively shutting down vaccination sites. It is essential that people understand that appointment slots are available based on vaccine availability. Showing up without an appointment puts stress on the system and depletes scarce resources, ”county officials said Tuesday. Press release.
Meanwhile, local health officials expect 35,000 more doses by next week.
“This morning we just got notified by the state… we will be receiving an additional 35,000 doses next week,” County health official Dr Clayton Chau said at Wednesday’s press conference. “Every week we get an allowance.”
As people anxiously await the vaccine, deaths from the virus are on the rise.
The virus has now killed 2,195 people out of 202,753 confirmed cases, including 16 new deaths reported today, according to the county Health care agency.
The agency has reported nearly 300 new deaths since the start of the year.
Recently reported deaths can go back several weeks due to reporting delays.
Arvizu said the deaths hit the home as the virus became so prevalent.
“Friends have passed away, unfortunately. It was someone else you didn’t know, ”she said.
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.
The agency also reported 3,221 additional new cases of the virus on Thursday.
Orange County has averaged about 3,500 new cases per day over the past week.
State public health officials estimate that about 12% of those newly infected end up being hospitalized within three weeks.
Throughout the week, Chau repeatedly said that the decision to include people 65 and over in the first round of vaccinations was an effort to prevent them from being hospitalized.
On Tuesday, Chau told county supervisors that just over half of all OC hospitalizations are people 65 and older.
Cord has said he supports the movement.
“We know our intensive care units have been stressed and our hospitals have been stressed,” he said. “So if we want to flatten the usage curve for hospitals, not just flatten the curve in general, we have to fix that.”
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
[ad_2]
Source link