Los Angeles County on Saturday surpassed 1 million cases of coronavirus since reporting its first infection nearly a year earlier, and also recorded for the first time a new, more contagious variant of the virus initially identified in the UK.
The variant, B.1.1.7, was previously found in California’s provinces of San Diego and San Bernardino, as well as 14 other U.S. states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is not believed that it makes people sicker or increases their risk of death, but it seems to spread more easily, raising fears that it could hamper efforts to bring the pandemic under control if it displaces other tribes and dominate in the region.
Officials believe the variant has been present in LA County for some time and is already spreading in the community. The person who appears to have contracted it is a man who recently spent time in LA County but has since traveled to Oregon, where he is currently isolated, officials said. Quest Laboratories in Washington confirmed the discovery, officials said.
Health experts have been worried for some time that the new strain will pose even more challenges in a region that has become a hub of COVID-19 in America, pushing hospitals to the brink and about 1 in 3 residents of infecting the country. the pandemic.
Officials hope fast vaccination is a weapon against the new tribe, which a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Announced Friday will show rapid growth in early 2021, becoming the predominant variant in March. ‘
“The presence of the British variant in Los Angeles County is worrying, as our healthcare system is already very tense with more than 7,500 people currently being admitted to hospital,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in the country. a statement said.
The new milestone comes because COVID-19 cases in the province and other parts of California are starting to flatten, although conditions in hospitals are critical. According to The Times, LA County recorded 13,291 new cases of the virus and 237 related deaths, bringing the total to 1,003,923 cases and 13,741 deaths.
“Our community bears the brunt of the winter congestion and experiences large numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, five times more than we experienced during the summer,” Ferrer said. “This more contagious variant makes it easier for infections to spread to workplaces, shops and our homes.”
The discovery added officials’ race to vaccinate as many people as possible even more urgently before the variant took off. The process is complicated by the decentralized public health system in California, in which local public health departments, which already have the enormous amount of work associated with testing and contact detection, are also responsible for prioritizing and distributing the vaccine.
There have also been reports of vaccine shortages at the federal level.
Although Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that the state will expand vaccine admission to include all 65 and older, LA County is still working to vaccinate all of its eligible health care workers – those seeking direct or indirect exposure to patients or had infectious materials. (Healthcare workers who do not have routine personal contact with patients will be vaccinated at a later stage, officials said.)
The province’s public health department on Saturday issued a broad call for licensed health workers – including medical doctors, osteopathic doctors, medical assistants, nurses, licensed occupational nurses, dentists and pharmacists – to voluntarily vaccinate other health workers during unpaid, unpaid hours. at five “mega” distribution sites.
The sites are expected to open Tuesday at the Pomona Fairplex, the Forum in Inglewood, Northern States, Calridge, the LA County Office of Education in Downey and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, with appointments available each day through Feb. 14. , the country said. .
In addition, the city of Dodger Stadium’s vaccine website began administering doses on Friday.
As of Thursday, health workers in LA County had received more than 279,000 doses of vaccine, including more than 219,000 first doses and more than 60,000 second doses, officials said, but they estimate about 450,000 health workers still need to be vaccinated.
Public health officials said they expected all qualifying health workers to receive their first dose in the next two weeks, and that they would be able to go to the next phase of vaccinations in early February. Those eligible in the next phase are people aged 65 and over, as well as those who work in education, childcare, emergency services or food and agriculture and are exposed to the risk.
Long Beach, which has its own public health department, went into the next phase on Friday, with Mayor Robert Garcia and other critical employees in the city receiving the vaccine. Others who are just eligible include police officers and 65-year-olds and older.
This came after the city vaccinated about 15,000 health workers and residents of long-term care facilities, Garcia said in a news release.
Next week, Long Beach will open clinics to vaccinate grocery workers and has planned clinics next week to vaccinate educators, the release reads.
Other counties, including Riverside and Orange, also began vaccinating 65 and older and essential workers in certain sectors.
But there are reports that appointments were difficult to obtain.
Around 4 p.m. Wednesday, Riverside County opened 5,600 appointments for vaccination clinics taking place Thursday through Sunday at Corona High School, Heritage High School in Menifee, San Gorgonio Middle School in Beaumont, Indio Fairgrounds and Diamond Stadium in Elsinore. more. The Diamond Stadium Clinic was exclusively for people 65 years and older.
Spokeswoman Brooke Federico said all the appointments were discussed at 7 p.m.
On Friday, the country made another 11,000 appointments available until Jan. 22, and the places filled up in about two hours, she said.
The province also said it had received just enough vaccine from the state to cover the clinics operating over the weekend.
“As of now, we have 14,346 doses on hand as public health, and that’s just enough to go through the vaccine clinics we planned on Sunday,” Kim Saruwatari, the country’s director of public health, said on Friday a lively meeting with country officials. “And by the end of Sunday, we should be vaccinated as a public health department.”
An additional 100 479 doses were administered or sent to the healthcare providers to be administered over the next few days. In contrast, the province estimates that more than 700,000 residents are currently eligible to receive the vaccine.
Saruwatari said the country usually receives about 35,000 to 40,000 doses of weekly consignments, but the award is not exact or regular.
“And so this is one of the challenges that makes planning very difficult,” she said. “We do not know when the vaccine will arrive with certainty and we do not know how much we will get with any degree of certainty at any given time.”
Orange County opened a large-scale vaccine distribution center at Disneyland this week, saying it plans to eventually open four others. But the number of people trying to make an appointment has quickly overloaded the system, provincial supervisor Andrew Do said this week. He encouraged people to keep trying.
The vaccination, along with two smaller ones, was overwhelmed earlier this week by people who showed up without appointments, which led to them effectively switching off for a while on Tuesday, the country said.
The platform for planning new appointments, Othena.com, is regularly updated to address technical issues, said Jessica Good, public information manager of the province’s health department.
More than 256,000 people have registered on the site since Saturday – an average of 12,000 registrations per hour – and more than 30,000 of them have been vaccinated, she said. Good added that more appointments would be available as the country received more vaccine.
Orange County has about 450,000 residents who are 65 years and older, plus 250,000 critical and health workers and first responders, but so far only 170,000 doses have been allocated, Good said. Of that, 80% went to hospitals and major health care providers, she said.
In a reminder that a single shot of the vaccine did not confer full immunity, U.S. Representative Lou Correa, representing the 46th Congress District of parts of Orange County, announced that he had tested positive for the virus the previous day – although he received his first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 19th.
“I now join more than 200,000 Orange County residents who have been diagnosed with the virus,” Correa said in a statement Saturday.