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Spencer Custodio |
While the Latino community in Orange County has so far only received 11% of coronavirus vaccines, county officials said the actual number and demographics of those vaccinated were roughly on hold at this stage.
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At Tuesday’s OC Supervisors Public Meeting, Supervisor Don Wagner asked about a CO voice article published yesterday, which showed that San Diego County was vaccinating about twice as fast as OC.
According to the Orange County Vaccine Tracking System, about 242,000 out of about 3.2 million people received at least one dose of the two-part vaccine, or about 7.5 percent of the county’s population. A total of 288,000 injections were administered.
OC’s tracker is updated weekly and was updated last Thursday.
San Diego County Vaccine Tracking, which is updated daily, does not give data on how many people in the county have been vaccinated out of the estimated 3.3 million people who live there, but it does indicate that about 14.1% of the county’s population received at least one of the 503,000 vaccines administered.
OC Health Care Agency director and health official Dr Clayton Chau said Orange County’s rate was higher after a recent influx of vaccinations.
“So a week ago Sunday, more than 300,000 people in Orange County received the vaccine,” Chau told Wagner. “More than 10%, of course.”
Wagner said he wanted to publicly clarify the vaccine data to avoid confusion.
“Why are we below San Diego?” What can we do to fix this problem? Or is it just a resource issue? ” he said.
Chau said San Diego County has more health workers than the OC, which loaded vaccines early on.
That is starting to change after state guidelines extend vaccinations to all people 65 and older, he said.
“So gradually we saw that we have a few thousand more allowances for us and San Diego has a few thousand less,” Chau said. “When we have a lot of vaccines, this will all be questionable.”
Almost 16% of San Diego County’s vaccines went to the Latin American community and 2.1% to the black community, compared to 11% and 1% in CO, respectively, according to the county vaccine trackers.
Chau told Wagner that current immunization figures are still unreliable.
“There is no right or wrong, supervisor. Because the data is very confusing, ”Chau said. “Everyone is doing their best to reconcile our figure. We believe – Orange County is not alone – most counties believe the number shown in the state system is incorrect, it is underreported. “
Confusion over who exactly gets vaccinated comes as state officials roll out their own vaccine registration website, called MyTurn.
It is not known whether the data collected on OC’s vaccine app and website Othena will fit into the state system.
Chau said he spoke to the secretary of the National Agency for Health and Human Services, Dr Mark Ghaly, about the matter.
“I told him that I have over 600,000 seniors registered in Othena. I’m not going to ask them to re-register for MyTurn. So you have to find a way for us to integrate and work together. ”
Meanwhile, supervisors and county officials are pushing the state to provide zip code data so the Health Care Agency can pinpoint where vaccines are going and reallocate doses to hardest-hit residents.
“We’re not getting the zip codes and other pieces of data that we need at the local level to understand our plan to roll out vaccines to vulnerable populations,” said supervisor Lisa Bartlett.
Chau said the best data they have is from the local app.
“So 90% of people who have received the vaccine do not have a postal code. So we are in conversation with the state right now about what happened there, ”Chau said. “The only correct data system we can turn to is Othena.”
Wagner said he was ready to reallocate vaccines to areas hardest hit by CO.
“I argue that we generally transfer resources to the human beings in this county who are hit the hardest,” Wagner said. “Because science tells me that’s where to go.”
The distribution system is another compounding problem with vaccine deployment.
Hospitals get about 80% of the vaccines and the county gets the remaining 20% to use in supersites or smaller immunization programs.
“It seems to me that our own advocacy work may not be where it could be. We keep saying “Go see your health care provider”. But that’s not a very good direction. If 80% of the vaccines are somewhere and we only promote our 20%, there is something wrong with the message. I think we need to do more information about where they are vaccinating or how people could access that extra 80%, ”said supervisor Doug Chaffee.
Chau said Health Care Agency officials should check with each hospital dispensing vaccines for accurate vaccination numbers.
Part of the effort is to make sure all vaccines are put into people’s arms within a week of receiving the doses, otherwise state officials will reassign the vaccines, Chau said.
Members of the Santa Ana City Council have called on county officials to set up vaccination sites in the hard-hit city.
In a letter to Chairman of Supervisors Andrew Do, Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento said the city was ready to roll as soon as it received the vaccines.
“On behalf of the City of Santa Ana, I am writing to you today to express my concerns that our city, one of the hardest hit communities in Orange County during the current pandemic, is not receiving a sufficient quantity of COVID-19 vaccines for its inhabitants. We are particularly concerned about the city’s elderly and non- or little-English speaking English speakers who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic, ”Sarmiento said in a February 4 letter.
The city already has funding and potential vaccination sites, he said.
“The city council has set aside funds, as well as potential sites and staff to help with vaccine delivery. We are confident that with our help we can help the county improve its health equity measure, ”said Sarmiento.
Do said they were setting up a site at Santa Ana College and the county was teaming up with OCTA and Abrazar, a Westminster-based community organization that aims to help care for OC’s most vulnerable seniors. .
Do said the partnerships were necessary “in order to provide free transportation to the elderly who cannot make it to the modules because that is one of the difficulties people face.”
Officials also plan to set up a vaccination site at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove.
“We know that some ethnic groups that are part of Catholic families have a great reluctance to take vaccines,” said Chau. We are in conversation with the Cathedral of Christ to install a medium pod there. ”
The Vatican is urging people to get vaccinated.
“All vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certainty that the use of such vaccines does not constitute a formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in the production of vaccines are derived”, the Vatican says in a December declaration.
Vatican officials said the coronavirus vaccines were for the “common good.”
“In any case, from an ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good can recommend vaccination, in particular to protect the weakest and the most exposed, ”the statement read.
As county officials try to get accurate information on vaccine distribution, OC hospitalizations continue to decline.
As of Tuesday, 1,058 people were hospitalized, including 324 in intensive care units, according to the county Health care agency.
Yet deaths continue to increase.
The virus has now killed 3,416 people, including 33 new deaths reported on Tuesday.
Recently reported deaths can go back several weeks due to reporting delays.
Since the beginning of February, the Health Care Agency has reported 307 new deaths.
The virus has already killed more than five times the flu on an annual average.
It also killed more heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke 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 of 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 23,883 dead in December, according to the latest available status data.
Chau said the group most at risk of being killed by the virus, the elderly, are increasingly being vaccinated.
“We have vaccinated over 100,000 people aged 65 and over,” Chau told county supervisors.
But they must focus on the hardest-hit areas before expanding vaccine eligibility, Chau said.
“Mainly zip codes in Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Garden Grove have a higher percentage of COVID deaths if they get it,” Chau said, adding that officials should “be careful to vaccinate our seniors in these areas. And these areas have a larger Latino population. ”
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
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