Super Vaccine Sites Open in Los Angeles County

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County stepped up vaccination efforts on Tuesday in its battle against the coronavirus, opening five large-scale vaccination sites to complement 75 smaller sites and the large-capacity center opened by the city at Dodger Stadium. County authorities are also expanding testing for people aged 65 and over.

The openings come at a critical stage in the county’s fight against COVID-19, with transmission rates remaining high and the number of cases and deaths continuing to rise rapidly. Hospitalizations have declined slightly over the past week, but health officials still fear a resurgence in admissions to medical centers due to infections that occurred during the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Over the weekend, the county confirmed the first local case of a variant strain of the virus first detected in the UK. This strain, known from B.1.1.7, is not considered more deadly, but it is much more contagious and easily passes from person to person with the potential to spread rapidly among the population.

On Monday evening, officials at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced that they had identified another strain of the virus, known as CAL.20C, which has been detected in more than a third of COVID-19 patients treated with the hospital. The strain was also found in about a quarter of samples from COVID-19 patients in Southern California.

“The recent surge in COVID-19 positive cases in Southern California coincides with the emergence of CAL.20C,” Eric Vail, physician and assistant professor of pathology and director of molecular pathology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, said in a statement on Monday.

Cedars-Sinai officials said the CAL.20C strain is distinct from the UK variant. It is still not clear whether the CAL.20C strain spreads faster, is more deadly, or is resistant to current viral treatments. But researchers at Cedars-Sinai said the strain is partly responsible for the sharp rise in cases the county has seen in the past two months. Hospital officials said the strain was virtually non-existent in the county in October, but in December it accounted for 36.4% of COVID-19 cases in Cedars-Sinai and 24% of COVID-19 samples. collected in Southern California.

The strain has also been detected in patients in Northern California, New York, Washington and overseas in Oceania, according to Cedars-Sinai.

Los Angeles County crossed the one million cumulative cases mark over the pandemic this weekend. Although this milestone represents about a tenth of the county’s total population, modeling released last week estimated that up to a third of residents have been infected at some point, with many never but always knowing. capable of spreading the virus. to others.

With at least 10% of patients with COVID-19 requiring hospitalization, a higher number of cases will mean more hospitalizations and, ultimately, more deaths.

The rise in deaths from the virus prompted a grim move from Southland air quality regulators on Sunday, which raised the cap on the number of bodies local crematoria could burn. Crematoria normally operate below a limit designed to reduce the effect of cremations on air quality.

The supervisory board was due to meet behind closed doors Tuesday morning to discuss various topics. The council was supposed to discuss possible new health restrictions last week – such as the closure of indoor malls and other non-essential retail businesses – but took no immediate action. It was not clear whether the topic would be discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Public Health will hold a virtual town hall on Tuesday at 6 p.m. to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine, how it was developed, where it will be distributed and when it will be made available to the general public. . The town hall will be broadcast live on the department’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. People can also submit questions before the meeting.

The county reported 88 additional COVID-19 deaths and 9,927 new infections on Monday, noting the numbers could be artificially low due to a delay in weekend and vacation reporting from Martin Luther King Jr. Hospitalizations Current in the county stood at 7,328 on Monday, county officials reported.

The new deaths, along with one reported by health officials in Pasadena, brought the total death toll in the county to 13,937. New cases in Los Angeles County, along with 107 confirmed by Pasadena, carried the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the county since the start of the pandemic at 1,024,297.

According to the state, 7,322 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday, continuing a downward trend from last week. Hospitalizations peaked at more than 8,000 in early January, putting pressure on county hospitals, forcing ambulances to wait hours to unload patients and prompting medical centers to treat patients in souvenir shops and cafeterias.

But while the COVID-19 hospital patient population tends to decline, intensive care units remain filled with patients infected with the virus. According to the state, there were 1,728 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units in the county, which has about 2,500 licensed intensive care beds.

Health officials have said in recent weeks that about two-thirds of the county’s intensive care patients are being treated for COVID-19, leaving little room for those in need of intensive care unit care for other reasons .

Authorities have warned that if new hospital admissions appear to level off, the numbers could climb again as those infected over the Christmas and New Year holidays begin to develop symptoms and require medical attention.

The county on Monday announced a key milestone in its vaccination efforts. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, nearly 99% of skilled nursing facilities in the county had administered the first doses of the vaccine to residents and staff. The remaining five nursing homes will administer injections this week.

And late Monday, Supervisory Board Chair Hilda Solis issued an order making COVID-19 vaccines available to anyone 65 and over, starting Thursday – despite concerns from health officials about the supply of doses.

Solis’ decision was in line with guidance released last week by Governor Gavin Newsom. But that was at odds with comments from county health officials, who wanted to wait until vaccinations for frontline health workers were completed before offering limited vaccine supplies to a wider range of people.

Concerns about the vaccine supply escalated Sunday evening, when the state epidemiologist warned suppliers to stop giving doses of a batch of 330,000 Moderna vaccines in response to allergic reactions suffered by a handful of people in San Diego.

The 330,000 doses of Moderna vaccine that are no longer available represent 10% of all vaccines received by the state so far – dealing a blow to counties such as Los Angeles that have requested more vaccine allocations to answer the question.

Supply is so short that operators at the Dodger Stadium vaccination clinic warned over the weekend that they could run out of doses as early as Wednesday.

The affected Moderna vaccines have been distributed to 287 sites across California. It was not known if any of these locations were in Los Angeles County.

Due to high winds Tuesday, a COVID-19 vaccination site at the Hansen Dam closed for the remainder of the day, according to city firefighters. All appointments for vaccinations have been transferred to the vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.

To find out more about the vaccination phases and to make an appointment, visit the website.

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The City News Service and Patch Editor Nicole Charky contributed to this report.