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About 6,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine were potentially spoiled at Soka University’s Super POD vaccination site in Aliso Viejo on Wednesday due to a faulty refrigerator.
“It’s in that range,” Orange County CEO Frank Kim said of the number of potentially spoiled doses. “We don’t have an exact figure yet.” There is always the possibility that the vaccines could be used, Kim said.
The Pfizer vaccine should be placed in a special freezer and then transferred to a refrigerator to begin thawing. The next step is to mix it and allow it to thaw completely at room temperature before inoculations can begin. The vaccine should be used within six hours of thawing at room temperature.
“We are in talks with the manufacturer to see what can be done with the vaccine,” Kim said. Kim stressed that none of the vaccines were used and that more doses were brought in so that appointments made for Wednesday would not be affected.
Meetings at Dodger Stadium go unused as people are confused about first dose dates. Hetty Chang reported on NBC4 News on Tuesday, February 9, 2021.
Pharmacists who arrived at work at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday to begin the vaccine prep process noticed that the refrigerator had malfunctioned, Kim said. Besides disappointment with the potentially spoiled doses, the county received good news on Wednesday in a continuing downward trend in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
The Orange County Health Care Agency has reported 454 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the cumulative total to 240,220. “Everything is going in the right direction,” Kim said of case and hospitalization rates. “But I’ll wait a week to see if there are any problems with the Super Bowl … We’ll see what next week looks like.”
Officials are concerned about an increase in cases due to Super Bowl gatherings last Sunday. The county also recorded 35 more deaths, bringing the death toll to 3451. Death reports are staggered as they come from various sources and are not always recorded immediately.
January was the deadliest month for COVID-19 in Orange County with 893 deaths. As of December, the death toll stands at 853. This means that about half of the county’s deaths since its first death on March 19 occurred in December and January.
Plans to reopen schools are expected to be announced later this week, but some parents are not yet rushing to send their children back to class. Kim Baldonado reported on NBC4 News on Tuesday, February 9, 2021.
Of the deaths recorded on Wednesday, seven were qualified residents of nursing homes, bringing the total to 879 since the start of the pandemic. Three were residents of assisted living facilities, bringing the total to 380.
The adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 people fell from 39 last Tuesday to 29.7 this week, and the test positivity rate over a seven-day average, with a seven-day lag, fell by 10.9% last week at 9.4%.
The positivity rate for the county’s health equity quartile, which measures cases in the worst-hit and neediest areas of the county, fell from 13.9% last week to 12.4%. The state color-coded levels frame numbers are updated on Tuesday.
To move to the least restrictive red level in the upper purple level of the state’s coronavirus regulatory system, the county must increase to 4 to 7 new cases daily per 100,000 and a 5% to 8% positivity rate with one quartile health equity at 5.3% to 8%.
The number of coronavirus patients in county hospitals rose from 1,058 on Tuesday to 1,009 on Wednesday, and the number of intensive-care patients rose from 324 to 310, according to the OCHCA.
County state-adjusted intensive care bed availability remains at zero, and the unadjusted figure fell from 10.2% on Tuesday to 12.1% on Wednesday. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 and non-coronavirus patients.
The OCHCA also reported 19,850 tests on Wednesday, bringing the total to 2,817,697.
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