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Los Angeles County residents waiting for their second dose of COVID-19 vaccines should keep tabs on their email, officials said this week.
Those who have received vaccines at a county-run vaccination site will receive a direct message allowing them to confirm follow-up appointments, according to the county public health department.
People who have been vaccinated at a site run by the city of Los Angeles – like Dodger Stadium – will automatically be scheduled for a second date, officials said, and are expected to receive a text and email with details .
County officials said most Angelenos will receive their second injection where they received their first dose, but it is possible that some residents will be instructed to go elsewhere.
It is important that the second dose, wherever it is received, is the same vaccine as the first. For Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the recommended waiting time between injections is 21 days. For Moderna therapy, it is 28 days.
“Please try to keep your appointments for the second dose,” county public health officials wrote on Facebook on Monday. “If you need to reschedule due to an emergency, an email address will be provided to contact us. We know this has been a stressful process and we deeply appreciate your patience.
Those who have been vaccinated at a pharmacy, community clinic, or hospital should contact these facilities to ask about their second appointment.
“All vaccination sites receive enough second doses each week to schedule appointments for people who received their first dose at their site,” County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said during a briefing Monday. “I apologize for the many difficulties people have gone through trying to get dates.”
More information is available at vaccinatelacounty.com and corona-virus.la/covid-19-vaccine.
Concerns over the availability of second doses, along with the logistical challenges associated with their planning, are the latest issues in a sometimes chaotic vaccine rollout that has been plagued by shifting eligibility criteria, scheduling systems. online overloaded and other technical problems.
As urgent as these problems are, they are secondary to what officials see as the biggest obstacle: an insufficient and sometimes unreliable supply of fire.
“The provision of vaccines, we recognize that is going to be our rate-limiting step,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, California health and human services secretary, in a briefing Tuesday. “We always hope for more, we continue to work with the federal administration to do more, but this will be one of our biggest challenges.”
Health care workers, first responders, residents, and trained nursing facility staff were the first groups eligible to receive the vaccine in California. That changed in mid-January, when Governor Gavin Newsom widened the pool to include people 65 and over.
While some hailed the news that older Californians – who have fallen seriously ill and died from COVID-19 at extremely disproportionate rates – were being allocated a spot in the queue, the state’s decision came in the middle dose decrease and sparked chaos and confusion as some counties moved quickly to allow seniors to enter their queues, while others did not.
The dramatic increase in the number of people eligible for vaccination has also strained the availability of vaccines.
In LA County, older residents were able to schedule vaccine appointments starting the week of Jan. 18, meaning second doses will have to start coming out next week.
However, the number of doses the county is receiving is inconsistent and trending downward. For the week of January 11, LA County received 193,950 doses of vaccine; the following week he received only 168,575 doses and only 146,225 doses the following week.
As of January 25, the county had received nearly one million doses of the vaccine and had administered nearly 800,000.
Given the relatively scarce supply, vaccines will increasingly need to be set aside for second doses – leaving fewer vaccines for people looking to start the regimen.
Last week, the LA County Department of Public Health, acting at the request of the California Department of Public Health, “picked up” 10,000 doses from Ralphs Pharmacies that were intended for upcoming appointments – instead allocating them to support county mass vaccination sites.
While a spokesperson for the supermarket chain said that only people seeking their first dose would be affected and those who were due to receive their second dose would still receive their injections, the episode underscored the need for second. doses outweighed the overwhelming demand for initial vaccinations.
This decision also added to the confusion among residents over 65. Depending on the county, those who received their first injection of Ralphs before Jan. 27 will receive a call or email from the pharmacy to schedule their second dose. People inoculated after this date will be scheduled for their second dose when they receive their first dose.
The vaccine shortage isn’t just in Los Angeles. Kaiser Permanente has been forced to cancel more than 5,000 appointments for seniors in Santa Clara County due to limited supplies.
Despite the issues that have hampered the rollout, there are signs that California may start to gain momentum.
About 7.2% of Californians have received at least one dose, according to data compiled by The Times. Almost 61% of the state’s vaccine supply has been administered – a dramatic improvement from a week ago, but still behind other large states like Texas, Illinois and New York, and barely ahead of Florida.
Additional groups are also starting to take their photos. Cal State Long Beach began its immunization program on Tuesday, with the top priority being staff working on campus and staff and faculty over the age of 65 or with high-risk health conditions.
“These educators and staff are working on campus and we have people vaccinated to make sure we can safely reopen our campus,” said Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia written on twitter.
Union Rescue Mission workers on the Skid Line also escorted some of their older homeless clients to get vaccinated on Tuesday.
“They were very excited and relieved to have a chance to get the vaccine,” said Reverend Andy Bales, President and CEO of the mission.
Bales said about seven men received their injection on Tuesday, but the hope is to get 40 older people – men and women – their first dose this week.
For a while, it appeared that Los Angeles’ homeless population had largely escaped the ravages of the pandemic. But this latest wave was different and left no group in the hard-hit county unscathed.
“It was alarming,” Bales said. “And I know, to me, I feel like COVID-19 has closed in around us, and really, it seems like it’s making its way around every precaution. I know this is also what a lot of our customers feel.
Changes to California’s vaccination plan are also on the horizon. Officials announced last week that Newsom advisers have reached an agreement with California’s Blue Shield to oversee the distribution of vaccine doses to counties, pharmacies and private healthcare providers.
Newsom also announced that California would move the vaccine priority to an age-based eligibility structure – in hopes of creating a framework that is easier to understand and faster to implement.
Details of this revision are scarce. Ghaly said the state was continuing to work on updating the vaccine prioritization – and more details could be released next week. He stressed, however, that fairness will be the cornerstone of the California approach.
“This notion that we have to make a choice between speed of vaccinations and fairness is not a choice,” he said. “It’s a wrong choice. We can do both. “
However, the idea of switching to an age-based formula has already drawn criticism from groups representing some essential workers and people with disabilities.
While he did not give details of what changes might be coming, Ghaly said, “We are leading our vaccination effort by focusing on protecting those at greatest risk and those who can. suffer the worst consequences of COVID ”and that the state is“ working with the disability community, working with those caring for people with serious chronic illnesses, starting to galvanize around a policy that we will be announcing more late.
Times editors Maya Lau, Laura J. Nelson, Colleen Shalby, Maura Dolan, and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
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