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San Diego County’s COVID-19 figures point in the right direction, even as the county reported 539 new infections of the virus and 57 deaths, according to the county’s most recent reports.
San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said Wednesday that a supply chain issue with vaccines last weekend shows how slim the margins are for delays and errors in the system. The winter storm which affected much of the country also put a brake on some appointments for vaccines.
Due to delays in vaccine shipments to San Diego, the county is postponing about 1,000 appointments for the first dose at its sites Thursday and Friday. Those concerned are informed that they will be postponed to next week.
Of the 765,500 doses of vaccine the county has received, 663,194 have been administered, more than 3,000 are awaiting treatment and 98,000 are due to appointments.
“You can see we’re running very, very skinny,” Fletcher said.
The county reserves part of the appointments available for the COVID-19 vaccination each day for a pilot project that aims to fairly distribute the new coronavirus vaccine.
Vaccine Equity Planning Assistance sets aside appointments for people who are in currently eligible groups and who are at high risk of complications from COVID-19.
“We need to make sure that communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 have easier access to the vaccine,” said Dr Wilma Wooten, county public health official. “This project allows qualified people to make appointments and get vaccinated more easily.”
The county now has five super vaccine stations and 15 smaller neighborhood distribution sites, according to the county’s Health and Human Services Agency. Despite supply chain issues, Fletcher said the county has distributed its vaccines efficiently enough that he thinks teachers, food and agriculture workers, and law enforcement officers order will be able to start receiving vaccines from the first week of March.
Additionally, the HHSA plans to complete vaccinations at skilled nursing facilities in the county this week, which will allow mobile teams to deliver more vaccines to the county. In total, about 17.6% of the county’s population over 16 years of age have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 5% are fully inoculated.
Data on Wednesday brought the number of COVID-19 infections to 254,180 since the start of the pandemic, while the death toll rose to 3,099.
The 57 deaths – one of the highest daily death rates locally – are a reminder of the deadly severity of the pandemic, Fletcher said, but are likely the result of the delayed effects of a significant spike in cases in December and January.
The number of hospitalizations fell by just four patients to 804, while intensive care patients were down 10 to 256 from Tuesday’s figures. There are 57 available and staffed intensive care beds in the county.
Of 13,771 tests reported on Wednesday, 4% came back positive, bringing the 14-day moving average of positive tests to 5.5%.
As of Tuesday, the rate of new cases in the county fell enough to allow elementary schools to resume in-person teaching for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
According to the state’s weekly COVID-19 update, San Diego County’s adjusted case rate is 22.2 cases per 100,000 population. The state allows elementary schools to reopen as soon as counties reach an adjusted average daily new case rate of 25 per 100,000 population.
In-person classes cannot resume from grades 7 to 12 until the rate of new COVID-19 cases in the county drops to seven per 100,000 population.
San Diego County’s seven-day test positive percentage is 6.4%, which puts the county in the red level of the state’s four-level plan to reopen for that metric. The state uses each county’s worst metric – in this case, the adjusted case rate – and assigns counties at that level.
The county’s health equity metric, which examines the positivity of testing for areas with the lowest health conditions, is 9.7% and is in the purple level. This metric does not move counties to more restrictive levels, but should move to a less restrictive level.
Updated at 11:30 a.m. on February 18, 2021
–City news service
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