Starting Saturday, Jan. 23, Orange County will have a second mass vaccination center in Aliso Viejo, saving seniors in the southern province with appointments to get a COVID-19 shot a trip to Anaheim and the OC Health Care Agency’s daily increase vaccination capacity by thousands.
The Disneyland Super POD (point-of-distribution), a tent site that opened last week in one of the theme park’s parking lots, has vaccinated about 3,000 people a day. Eventually, the site will handle up to 8,000 a day, and a transit system is on the table, public health officials said.
Ideally, the second center of the province at Soka University of Wood Canyon Drive would process 4,000 to 5,000 people a day, said Dr. Margaret Bredehoft, deputy agency director of the Health Care Agency’s public health services, said.
“It all depends on the stock (vaccine) we have available,” she said. “It really is the bottleneck in Orange County” – as elsewhere.
As of Thursday, Bredehoft said provincial health personnel have 66,000 vaccines on hand, many of which will be allocated to community clinics, local pharmacies and other medical facilities that do not receive direct or federal agencies. According to her, another section will be used at the province’s vaccination sites.
Large health networks with more provinces are ordering their own vaccine from the state government, but because many health care providers in Orange County have not yet made efforts to vaccinate their covered seniors, the country has had to absorb a tidal wave of demand.
So far, staff members and volunteers in the province, which is part of Operation Independence Vaccination Campaign, have fired shots at about 65,000 people at the Anaheim super site and mobile pop-up sites, Bredehoft said.
Two one-day mobile clinics have been set up so far this month in areas with a high concentration of vulnerable elderly people, she said. But they were organized for invitations only with the help of senior groups.
More is planned, but to prevent a rush on these sites, health officials deliberately keep their timing and location under cover and only share information with target people who have been typed to register.
Bredehoft said the word came out early about one of the temporary clinics and ‘mass hysteria’ followed.
“Everyone came without an appointment, we had to have law enforcement and it actually became dangerous,” she said. “We had to quit.”
The health care agency will roll out mobile PODs, ideally a few each week, Bredehoft said to get coronavirus shots into the arms of more than 600,000 Orange County people 65 years and older by dropping their neighborhoods.
In total, about 109,000 vaccines were administered in Orange County last Sunday – mostly to frontline health workers, first responders and recently people 65 and older, according to the latest figures from the Health Care Agency.
The province’s ride was not yet flawless: many elderly people reported that they had problems with the Othena website and telephone program in the province, which should be used to plan an appointment with the vaccine.
Bredehoft, like other provincial officials this week, asked the public for patience as some wrinkles were ironed out. Despite early problems, tens of thousands of people have so far been vaccinated in provinces, she says.
“I would rather try to fix something that is broken than sit there and do nothing,” she said.
While some people got frustrated with long waiting times, Fifth District Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said the Soka website would offer a second option to ease the burden.
“If one yard is gray, they should choose the second yard,” she said. “We do not want people to sit at their computers and constantly refresh.”
Also, Othena was recently updated to allow users to provide and register their information and then receive an email with a four-hour window in which they must respond and plan their survey.
“We are in unprecedented times. “This is a new pandemic with new vaccines,” said Bredehoft. “Be patient with us. Yes, we want to hear your feedback, but it takes time to process and process this feedback. ”
Bredehoft said anyone who needs help registering with Othena should call the health agency at 714-834-2000.
Staff Writer Erika I. Ritchie contributed to this report.