All health care workers in the county can now be inoculated, which includes, but is not limited to, those who work in urgent care or primary care clinics, dental offices or pharmacies. Previously, only front-line workers in hospitals and nursing homes were allowed to get shot.
Officials are looking to speed up the launch – which has been considerably slow as cases continue to grow – with the possibility of vaccines expiring if not distributed over time.
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The county wants to vaccinate 500,000 health workers by the end of January.
The five new vaccine distribution sites, which are expected to open in the county next week, will be added to the city-run vaccination site that will open this week at Dodger Stadium, which was the largest test site. COVID-19 in the country.
The county already has dozens of vaccination sites throughout the area that offer doses of drugs. The new high-capacity sites – whose locations have not been vacated – “will allow us to accelerate vaccinations for front-line health workers,” County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday.
“These five sites, in addition to our private partner sites, will allow us to complete another 500,000 vaccinations among our health care workers by the end of January,” she said.
If vaccinations are completed for most of the county’s health workers by the end of the month, the next phase of the distribution effort is expected to begin in early February. This phase, known as 1B, would include people aged 75 and over and some categories of essential workers. By the end of March, the county hopes to begin Phase 1C, which would include people over the age of 50 or people over the age of 16 with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk for severe illness.
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The vaccination effort comes as the county and state continue to see an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths – one person dying on average every eight minutes in the county and 10 people testing positive every minute.
Ferrer said the county “is rapidly increasing our pace to reach a bleak landmark of a million cases.”
With 12,617 new infections confirmed Monday, along with 122 reported by health officials in Pasadena and 88 in Long Beach, the countywide total since the beginning of the pandemic was 932,908. The county also announced another 137 deaths through COVID-19 months, while Pasadena confirmed another death, raising the county’s death toll to 12,388.
Hospitals continue to be overrun by coronavirus patients, with only 650 beds available – including 48 intensive care beds – available as of Monday at 70 911 centers receiving “medial”. But officials have occasionally expressed some optimism over the leveling of hospital admissions in recent days.
According to the state, there were 7,926 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in LA County since Monday, including 1,724 in intensive care. Last week, the total number exceeded 8,000. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that in the past two weeks, the number of people hospitalized has risen 6 percent in the past 14 days, “among the smallest increases we’ve seen in two weeks.
“It’s just a point of optimism, a little light,” Newsom said, warning that a hospital jump could still be possible, given the recent winter holidays.
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Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of health services in Los Angeles County, also noted that the number of hospitalizations seems to have “stabilized” after dramatic increases in recent weeks, but overcrowding in hospitals has not yet been mitigated. Hospitals, more than half of all inpatients are treated for COVID-19 and more than 75% of intensive care patients have the virus. She said the numbers are similar for other hospitals across the country.
“We still have patients who are in the emergency department and we still have our clinical care teams that care for more patients than they would under normal circumstances,” Ghaly said.
“… There is still a shortage of staff at the county level at all the hospitals in the health care units and we are still very much in the middle of this deadly wave,” she said. We are following the data very closely over the next few days, as this is the time we would anticipate as we begin to see an increase in the number of patients in the recent Christmas and New Year holidays. ”
County Supervisor Hilda Solis – again urging residents to adhere to infection control measures, such as wearing masks and staying home as long as possible – provided a grim memory of the continuing severity of the pandemic, noting the pain of people dying from COVID -19 in a hospital, separated from his loved ones.
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“Dying because of COVID in the hospital means dying alone,” Solis said. “… Families share their last goodbyes on tablets and mobile phones.”
Solis said he heard stories from health workers about such conversations, saying they often include children or younger relatives who apologize to parents or grandparents for not bringing the virus into their homes.
“These apologies are some of the last words your loved ones will ever hear when they die alone,” Solis said. Please do not let this be your family.
Approximately 5 million people have been tested for COVID-19 in the county since the pandemic began, 18% being positive.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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