The shift is being made for people who have received their first dose of Pfizer vaccine and need their second after 21 days, said Manuel Martinez of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
County officials reported slow but steady progress in the coronavirus vaccination efforts on Friday, but said less than 3% of the population is fully vaccinated and appointments for the first doses will be difficult for now.
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At the seven large-scale vaccination sites managed by the county, a limited number of first doses will be administered on Monday, and the rest of the week, the appointments are reserved only for people who need their second dose of the drug, said Dr. Paul Simon, chief science officer of the county’s health department. To make an appointment, you must also provide documentation.
The province is currently in Phase 1B of vaccine eligibility, which includes people 65 and older, with the next group consisting of educators, teachers, childcare workers, food and agricultural workers, and counselors.
“So many people want to get vaccinated. This site here can easily get 4,000 people vaccinated a day, really 4,000 cars, and we just don’t have any vaccines. Today we were only able to release 1,100 appointments,” said Barbara Ferrer. , LA County Public Health Director.
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Simon said that although only the county’s seven vaccine sites will only be administering second doses this week, residents in other sites may run into problems as all providers face a vaccine shortage.
“Unfortunately, the biggest problem we still face with our vaccination capacity is the scarcity of supply and the variability in the amount of vaccines we receive from week to week,” said Simon. “This is a problem across the country and it makes planning a challenge.”
According to Simon, the latest figures indicate that more than 1.05 million vaccine doses have been administered in the province to date, including just over 104,000 second doses. This means that 2.6% of the province’s population aged 16 and older has been fully vaccinated so far. About 11% of the population aged 16 and older has received at least one dose.
The slow progress of the vaccination program has led some residents to become creative in finding ways to manipulate the appointment scheduling system to access the recordings.
Some people who are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine have hung up on the vaccination sites because of the small chance that there will be doses left over at the end of the day that will need to be administered to avoid wastage. Ferrer said this week that there have been issues with people claiming to be caregivers of disabled children showing up on vaccination sites with a generic, Xeroxed letter identifying them as such.
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Simon outlined a different way some people have tried to jump the line to get vaccines. According to Simon, people who received emails from the county about scheduling an appointment for a second dose of the vaccine shared the unique web link in the emails with friends. These people “schedule an appointment for the first dose, even if they are not currently eligible for vaccination.”
“It is important for people to understand that these actions are denying access to vaccination for people at high risk who are currently eligible for the vaccine,” said Simon. “When we identify these appointments, they will be canceled. I want the public to know that those who do not qualify and appear on any of our sites with one of these shared appointments will be turned down.”
He said he had no figures on how many people tried to cross the line that way, but “it happened enough that we saw it very clearly.”
Simon said the county was trying to find a way to modify the computer system to prevent such arrangements from being made.
Gavin Newsom discussed the problem of vaccine shortage at a briefing at Petco Park in San Diego on Monday.
“We are sober and aware of the scarcity that is the number of vaccines available in the United States of America. Nonetheless, we are not naive about our responsibility here in the state of California to get these vaccines out of the freezers to the people. said the governor.
Newsom said the state is administering nearly 200,000 doses of vaccine a day, double what a few weeks ago. But Newsom said the state needs even more help.
“So we’re making progress, we’re improving the pace of administration day in and day out, but we can’t do that at the state level without partners at the local level,” he said.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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