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Vaccination of Californians 65 and older could take until June, the state epidemiologist said on Wednesday, raising new concerns about when other groups will be eligible for the vaccine and highlighting the rapid decline in stocks. of COVID-19 vaccines.
This timeline would push back access to vaccines for people who are not currently on the priority list for at least four months, according to state epidemiologist Dr Erica Pan’s estimate at an advisory committee meeting on vaccines. The current list of priorities, in addition to older residents, includes healthcare industry workers, nursing home employees and residents.
The current pace could change if the federal government accelerates shipments beyond the current rate of 300,000 to 500,000 doses per week, Pan said. So far, the state has received approximately 4 million doses of the vaccine from the federal government.
“We don’t know when the supply will increase,” Pan said during a vaccine advisory committee Wednesday, noting that the state is not keeping the vaccine. The assessment is based on the dosage levels of the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines, which each require two doses to be effective. If the allocation increases and distribution speeds up, or if a new single-dose vaccine is approved, the schedule could change, she said.
In Los Angeles County, the situation was also clouded by shortcomings. The county needs more than 4 million doses to deliver the two-dose vaccination protocol to all healthcare workers – around 800,000 people – as well as 1.3 million people aged 65 and over, officials said.
But to date, the county has only received 853,650 doses. Once those 2.2 million people on the current priority list are vaccinated, 8 million will be left – each of whom would need two doses of the current vaccines.
Next week, the county will receive 143,900 doses, but 106,000 of those doses, or more than 70%, will be used for second doses for health workers and others. That will leave just 37,900 elderly and healthcare workers unvaccinated, officials estimate.
“Our ability to protect even more LA County residents in the weeks and months to come is entirely dependent and limited by the amount of vaccine we receive each week, and often we don’t know from week to week. ‘other how many doses will be allocated. in LA County, ”Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said at a press conference Wednesday.
Ferrer said the county actually has a strong network of more than 200 health care providers, including hospitals, health plans and pharmacies, ready to vaccinate the public. “We have a lot of potential in the system to really be able to distribute a lot of vaccine, but we don’t have a lot of vaccine to come out,” Ferrer said.
And in the short term, LA County public officials have said they don’t expect the amount of vaccines the state receives and allocates to the county to increase significantly.
Dr Seira Kurian, director of the Los Angeles County Public Department of Health’s medical affairs division, told a town hall on Tuesday evening that officials originally believed the federal government had stocks of vaccines that would be delivered to counties to boost supply when municipalities begin administering second doses.
“But since it is not known how much, if any, of these reserves are available, what will most likely happen is that we probably will not see a huge increase in the number of doses that reach us each week, but we we expect to continue to receive vaccine doses at the current rate and current levels, ”at least in the short term, Kurian said.
Counties across the state continued to report declining supplies. Fresno County officials had planned to vaccinate 30,000 people per week, but were forced to reduce that number to 8,000 to 10,000 per week, Joe Prado, director of the county’s community health division, said Tuesday.
The county asked the state for 20,000 more doses, but was told it would receive 5,100. “We’re going to run out of vaccines if our allocation doesn’t increase,” said Dr Rais Vohra, head of Fresno County Acting Health.
A similar situation is playing out in San Francisco, where city officials warned on Tuesday that vaccine availability would be depleted on Thursday as the city’s vaccine allocation fell significantly from a week ago and doses that had to be discarded had not been replaced.
Dr Grant Colfax, San Francisco’s director of public health, told a press conference the city received 12,000 doses a week ago and requested the same number this week. Instead, the city received only 1,775 doses.
Pan, the state epidemiologist, said more doses will be available after the state releases its grip on a large batch of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The state on Sunday told health care providers to temporarily stop using the specific batch of 330,000 doses after a “higher than usual” number of allergic reactions were reported.
Pan said the state is “likely able to release this pause” following a review by the Scientific Safety Review Working Group with input from allergists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and that a announcement on the decision is pending. The apparent allergic reactions occurred at a clinic in San Diego.
“The important thing that happened in this situation is that the right protocols were in place and all of the individuals are home and well,” said Pan.
Times editor Maura Dolan contributed to this report.
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