By 
Spencer Custodio |
Questions and concerns continue to revolve around how exactly the Orange County Health Care Agency will implement coronavirus distribution of vaccines outside of medical staff at hospitals.
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OC is not the only country where the vaccine has been delivered.
The rest of California is too.
Government Gavin Newsom said the efforts across the country were not good enough at a news conference on Monday.
“It went too slowly,” Newsom said. “All of us want to see 100% of the receipt delivered immediately into people’s arms.”
According to Newsom, only about a third of the 1.3 million vaccines were administered.
Public health officials on Tuesday warned the Orange County Health Agency to increase the deployment of the coronavirus vaccine after a slow start.
Officials also warned other provinces.
Dr Jason Cord, president of the Orange County Medical Association, said it was difficult to vaccinate on a scale with scarce resources and dwindling medical staff because of the tsunami of virus patients facing OC hospitals.
“We are all working day in and day out to care for the sick patients, which limits the ability to administer the vaccines,” Cord said. “We need to pull nurses and staff out of clinical areas to do that.”
Cord sits with Orange County Health Officer Dr. Clayton Chau in the task force OC Vaccine.
‘You have to reckon that vaccine clinics will also take on staff. “Do not misunderstand me, we are still doing it,” he said.
He said public health officials need certain staff levels, similar to the training plans in the hospital that must be submitted to the state.
“There’s not just a high staffing need,” Cord said. “There are also requirements for vaccine staff.”
Numerous private physicians and emergency physicians contacted Voice of OC and expressed their concern about when they would receive the vaccine.
“I am currently directly involved in the work to ensure that our non-hospital affiliated physicians and their staff are also vaccinated,” Cord said.
Chau told a news conference last month that there are not enough vaccines for all of OC’s medical workers.
‘As you can imagine, this is not enough. So we have to get in line, “he said.
There are different guidelines from federal and state health agencies, along with national medical organizations – that could contribute to the explosion of the vaccine.
Guidelines from the California Department of Public Health place hospital staff and paramedics in the first phase of the first phase, while primary care physicians and emergency physicians are in the second phase of the first phase.
The OC Health Care Agency uses vaccination guidelines from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, according to the agency’s website.
The CDC and the National Institutes of Health commissioned the National Academies to draft the guidelines.
The group has proposed a four-phase approach to vaccine distribution, with health workers high on the list – similar to the state’s tiger system.
‘In phase 1a, health workers will include’ front line ‘- health workers involved in direct patient care, as well as those who work in transport, environmental services or other services for health care facilities – who risk exposure to body fluids or aerosols, ”reads the guidelines.
Newsom said the state legislature is expected to consider $ 300 million in the upcoming budget to help with the proliferation, storage and other logistical problems, along with a public outreach campaign.
“We have been working for the last few days to increase the distribution sites and, more importantly, to speed up efforts to administer the vaccines,” Newsom said, and officials are investigating National Guard medical units, dentists and other clinics. . to aid in the distribution of vaccines.
Meanwhile, ambulance patients face longer waiting times before being dropped off at Orange County hospitals as coronavirus patients continue to flood the local hospital system.
A Monday situation report from OC Emergency Medical Services shows that 16 emergency rooms wait longer than 30 minutes and 10 emergency rooms wait longer than an hour.
By comparison, 14 emergency rooms waited longer than 30 minutes and eight waited more than an hour last Thursday.
And OC set a new record on Tuesday when it surpassed 2,200 hospitals.
According to the state hospital’s data, 2,236 people were admitted to hospital, including 504 in intensive care units – an increase of 163% in the past month.
The overall test positivity of Orange County remains hovering around 16%, according to state data, with a rate of 15.8% as of Tuesday.
The poorest inhabitants of the OC are again hit the hardest almost one in four people test positive.
In a Tuesday email, the director of OC Emergency Medical Services, dr. Carl Schultz, said six hospitals had requested additional staff support from the Health Agency.
‘OC hospitals ask staff, but not specifically from the national guard. After depleting all staff resources, they request staff from the OC Health Center (HCA)’s Disaster Coordination Center, the Agency Operations Center (AOC). They fill out various documents describing their need and other issues. The AOC seeks to fulfill the requests of the County assets. “If there is none available, we will send the request to the state,” Schultz said.
Schultz said if no state aid is available, state officials coordinate with federal officials to get help in the hospitals.
‘If that happens, the Federal Government may request that the National Guard be deployed. At present, there is no mandate to deploy National Guard assets in OC hospitals. “There are nurses, respiratory therapists and other medical providers who have been deployed from other agencies and staffing companies to hospitals,” he said.
The health care agency reported 1,376 new cases today – significantly lower than the nearly 9,000 reported on Monday.
Monday’s count went back at least two days due to maintenance of state servers.
OC now has an average of 2,800 new cases per day over the past week.
Public health officials estimate that about 12% of all newly infected people are hospitalized within three weeks.
It is a difficult virus for the medical community to tackle because some people show no symptoms but can still spread it. Others feel slight symptoms, such as fatigue and mild fever.
Others end up in ICUs for days and weeks before making it out, while others eventually die from the virus.
The virus has now killed 1,926 people out of 171,955 confirmed cases in OC, according to the County Health Agency.
The virus has killed more than three times as many people as the flu each year.
In that context, Orange County has averaged about 20,000 deaths a year since 2016, including 543 annual flu deaths, according to health status data.
According to the state’s death statistics, cancer kills more than 4,600 people, heart disease kills more than 2,800, more than 1,400 die as a result of Alzheimer’s disease and strokes kill more than 1,300 people.
According to Orange County, Orange County has already exceeded its annual average of 20,000 deaths, with 21,110 people dying in November. latest available state data.
In a Tuesday telephone interview, UC Irvine epidemiologist and professor of public health Andrew Noymer said January was becoming the worst month of the pandemic.
‘The fact is that January 2021 will go down in the annals of history as a crisis in hospitals; you can take one to the bank, ‘he said. “We basically want to beat. I do not know how to put it differently. I’m not at all optimistic about the next six weeks. ”
Here is the latest information on virus numbers in Orange County:
Infections | Hospitalizations and deaths | City-by-city data | Demographics
Spencer Custodio is a reporter for Voice of OC. You can reach him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio