There is growing concern that Los Angeles County residents will only be vaccinated against COVID-19 next year unless the stock of approved vaccines gets a big boost.
LA and the rest of the country are struggling to get enough vaccine to meet the swelling, especially after California allowed people 65 and older to access the vaccines. But while many people want over the vaccine, officials say they only get a fraction of what they need.
Dr. Paul Simon, chief scientific officer of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said that if the weekly vaccines were to rise to 500,000 doses, the province could potentially immunize 75% of its adult population by midsummer.
At the current rate, he said the “vaccination effort is likely to last until 2022.”
Mayor Eric Garcetti said that while the rate of vaccinations is likely to accelerate as more doses become available and additional vaccinations are approved, the math is challenging in a province of about 10 million people.
Both vaccines approved for public use in the United States – from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – require two doses that are administered weekly apart. Thus, Garcetti said, “The 7.5 million of the 10 million people the Department of Public Health expects to receive vaccination at the provincial level,” 15 million doses are needed.
The province receives an average of 160,000 doses a week, he said.
Even with the 853,650 doses the country received by Wednesday, there is a frightening gap of nearly 14.2 million. At the delivery rate Garcetti mentioned, it will take about 88 weeks to get enough vaccine to serve all Angelenos who need it.
Garcetti said he was confident that manufacturers would be able to meet demand and that the possible arrival of additional vaccines under consideration, including one from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, and a single dose offer offered by Johnson & Johnson developed, the supply will increase further.
“We are ready to do more here,” he said. “It’s going to be a sad day when I stand here and say, ‘Dodger Stadium has the capacity to take in 12,000 people, but we only have 2,000 vaccines.'”
Given the enormous need in the country with the most populous country, it can even be a months-long undertaking to administer doses to priority groups, unless the supply situation improves.
“If you take into account what the province gets each week – about 160,000 – and you just look at the number of health workers and the elderly, we’ll only get through that in June,” Garcetti said.
California health officials have expressed frustration over the pace of vaccine delivery, saying they have enough capacity and staff, but there are not enough shots to go around.
“We just are not getting enough vaccine doses to move as fast as we would like,” Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in LA County, said this week.
Another problem is that the quantity delivered to health care institutions varied from week to week; officials say it makes vaccination and long-term appointment planning difficult, if not impossible.
“We are daily challenged by the unpredictability of the offer,” Simon said. “And so we have to wait and see how much we’re going to be awarded before we can start making appointments with their patients.”
San Francisco officials warned this week that the Department of Public Health is running the COVID-19 vaccines, after the city’s allocation dropped significantly from a week ago and doses that had to be set aside were not replaced.
While the situation has been averted – thanks to California clearing the use of specific doses of Moderna held for further safety reviews, health officials said the city’s providers do not have adequate vaccine supplies to meet the current population being vaccinated . ”
Another bottleneck has arisen because a number of available shots have to go to second doses within the prescribed time frame of three to four weeks. If there are deficiencies, there are fewer shots available for the first doses of the vaccine.
This is certainly the case in LA County, where Simon said Friday that he thinks a majority of the offer will go for second doses next week. ‘
“There will be some first doses offered, but we want to be very careful because unfortunately we can not predict the supply chain even a few weeks ahead,” he said.
Simon admitted that there is tension between the fact that so many people want to be vaccinated with the first dose [and] to try to ensure that everyone who is vaccinated receives the full dose of two doses. ”
He added: ‘The vaccine trials were done with the two-dose regimen in mind. We know it works. We do not know exactly what protection one gets if there is a delay in the second dose. ‘
Another factor is that the criteria for who can be vaccinated – and when – were somewhat fluid.
While the state originally focused its efforts on health workers and staff and residents of long-term housing facilities such as nursing homes, Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that people aged 65 and older could get COVID-19 vaccinations – reducing the number of eligible Californians in exile. bring. but this caused confusion, as some provinces withheld the newly eligible group in view of limited supplies.
It is difficult to get data on how many vaccines are given, and the numbers are often delayed. According to the California Department of Public Health, Tuesday providers delivered nearly 1.6 million doses nationwide.
There is cautious optimism that California will eventually reverse the coronavirus boom that has plagued the state for months. Daily infection rates and COVID-19 hospitalizations in particular have declined, although this is much higher than before the third wave of the pandemic occurred in early November.
The ultimate indicator of the spread of the coronavirus – the number of deaths – remains high. California broke its record for most COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, with 735.
Although some pandemic indicators are pointing in the right direction, officials warn that progress is uncertain.
“Despite these promising trends, I want to emphasize that the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths remains far too high,” Simon said. “While there is reason to be hopeful, we should all be vigilant.”
Prevention protocols, such as wearing masks in public, washing hands regularly and avoiding meetings with those outside the household, are still important as the vaccination effort increases, officials and experts say.
But each new dose, Garcetti says, is a little more sunshine every day, until the clouds finally break. ‘
“Every vaccine we distribute here and in places in our city and in our country is the beginning of the end of this terrible year we have been through,” he said. ‘This is the hope for the days ahead. It’s a drug in the direction of a resurgent economy, in the direction of a restored Los Angeles, children at school, loved ones nearby – every dose is an injection of hope into the future. “
Times authors Maura Dolan, Colleen Shalby, Hayley Smith and Maya Lau contributed to this report.