LOS ANGELES – California epidemiologist calls for more than 300,000 coronavirus vaccinations to be stopped using a Modern vaccine version, as some people have received medical treatment for possible severe allergic reactions.
Dr. Erica S. Pan on Sunday advised suppliers not to use lot 41L20A of the Moderna vaccine until an investigation is completed by state officials, Moderna, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
“Out of an extreme abundance of caution and also acknowledging the extremely limited supply of the vaccine, we recommend that suppliers use other available vaccine inventories,” Pan said in a statement.
She said more than 330,000 doses in the batch arrived in California between Jan. 5 and Jan. 12 and were distributed to 287 suppliers.
Less than 10 people, who all received the vaccine in the same community, needed medical attention for 24 hours, Pan said. No other similar clusters were found.
Pan did not specify the number of cases involved or where they occurred.
However, six San Diego workers had allergic reactions to the vaccines they received at a mass immunization center on January 14th. The site has been temporarily closed and is now using other vaccines, KTGV-TV reported.
Modern MRNA,
In a statement, the company said it was “unaware of comparable adverse events in other vaccination centers that could have administered vaccines in the same batch.”
The CDC said COVID-19 vaccines can cause side effects for several days, including fever, chills, headaches, swelling or fatigue, “which are normal signs that your body is building protection.”
However, severe reactions are extremely rare. Pan said in a vaccine similar to Moderna, the rate of anaphylaxis – in which a reaction of the immune system can block breathing and cause blood pressure to drop – was about 1 in 100,000.
The announcement came as California counties continue to plead for more COVID-19 vaccine as the state tries to reduce its infection rate, leading to a record number of hospitalizations and deaths.
California, with a population of 40 million, has delivered about 3.2 million doses of the vaccine – which requires two doses for complete immunization – to local health departments and health care systems, the Department of Health said Monday State public.
Only about 1.4 million of these doses, or about 40%, were administered.
So far. the state has vaccinated less than 2,500 people per 100,000 population, a rate that falls well below the national average, according to federal data.
Although Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that anyone 65 or older will be eligible to start receiving the vaccine, Los Angeles County and others said they do not have enough doses to vaccinate so many people and are concentrating more. first on the inoculation of medical care. workers and the most vulnerable elderly living in care homes.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent sent a letter to state and county public health officials requesting permission to provide COVID-19 vaccinations in schools for staff, local community members and students once the children’s vaccine was released. was approved.
“Such action will help reopen schools as soon as possible and in the safest way possible,” wrote Superintendent Austin Beutner.
California is approaching 3 million cases of coronavirus and more than 33,600 people have died since the beginning of the pandemic last year, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
The COVID-19 mortality rate in Los Angeles County – the nation’s most populous and an epicenter of the state pandemic – works at about one person every six minutes.
On Sunday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District suspended several pollution control limits on the number of cremations for at least 10 days to deal with a backlog of corpses at hospitals and funeral homes.
“The current death rate is more than double the pre-pandemic years,” the agency said.
On average, California has recorded about 500 deaths and 40,000 new cases daily in the past two weeks. Although hospitalizations and hospitalizations in intensive care units have remained on a slight downward trend, officials have warned that they could reverse when the full impact of transmissions is felt during Christmas and New Year’s gatherings.
“As the number of cases continues to rise in California, the total number of people who will have serious results will increase,” the state health department said Monday in a statement.
Adding concern, California is facing new forms, possibly more transmissible than COVID-19.
The state health department announced on Sunday that an L452R variant of the virus appears more and more in the genetic sequencing of COVID-19 test samples from several counties.
The variant was first identified last year in California and other states and countries, but has been identified more frequently since November and in several large outbreaks in northern Santa Clara County, the department said.
In general, the variant was found in at least a dozen counties. In some places. The test was found in a quarter of the sequenced samples, said Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist and professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
However, not all test samples receive genetic sequencing to identify variants, so its frequency was not immediately clear.
However, health officials said it was linked to a Christmas outbreak at Kaiser Permanente San Jose, which infected at least 89 staff members and patients, killing a receptionist. The outbreak was attributed to an employee who visited the hospital’s emergency room, wearing an inflatable Christmas tree costume.
The variant is different from another mutation, B117, which was first reported in the United Kingdom and seems to spread much more easily, although it does not seem to make people sick.
This variant has already appeared in San Diego County and Los Angeles County announced over the weekend that it has detected its first case.