The launch of the COVID-19 vaccine is likely to start reducing coronavirus transmission in Los Angeles County, the top health official there said this week, although he warned that the country still has a long way to go before herd immunity is achieved.
Daily cases of coronavirus in LA County have been steadily declining since the beginning of the new year, with the 7-day daily average testing of the positivity rate at 1.7%. Meanwhile, as of March 17, about 3.2 million of the 10 million people in the province had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
Overall, LA County administered the most doses from all of California’s provinces, the data show.
In an interview with the data Monday, Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in LA County, noted that the sharp decline in coronavirus infections was reported among residents of nursing homes and staff and health workers, who were one of the first to receive the vaccine.
“At our competent nursing homes we will not see a boom [as] saw us in April, May and June. “According to the local news station KTLA, the vaccinations are there,” Ferrer said. We have a lot of evidence on how effective they are already in the environment. “
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“I think this is good news – a lot of people have been vaccinated, a lot lower transfer rates,” she added.
Nevertheless, Ferrer and other provincial health officials called for warning, pointing out that the province’s rate of newly hospitalized people has slowed down due to COVID-19 as a whole, but is now doing so at a slower pace.
“This decline in the rate of slowdown reflects an increasing rate of transmission,” officials warned.
“Time will tell what it really means, and we do not yet have enough information to know if it will result in an increase in infections, but we must all remain vigilant,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the department of health services, said.
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Officials expect that this week will increase an extra dose of 280,000 vaccines to further increase vaccinations and prevent deficiencies.
In the meantime, however, “I think the message is that we just need to continue to be careful to remember that the vaccination obviously did not reach the entire population of Los Angeles County, that we want people to use a vaccine as one is available to them, and we are working to get it out as soon as possible, ‘Ghaly added.