Vaccine Eligibility To Open Up In LA Despite Vaccine Shortage

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles, once again, has 'bent the curve,' recovering from a coronavirus surge that claimed more than 1,000 lives each week of the year so far. But in a sign of the ongoing struggle to stay ahead of the pandemic, the City of Los Angeles will have to shut down its mass clinics for, at least, the rest of the week, due to a vaccine shortage.

As the lights go dark on the Dodger Stadium — the nation's largest vaccine site — President Joe Biden announced a deal to acquire enough vaccines for 300 million people by July. Also on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases predicted that everyone who wants the vaccine will have access to it by April.

“I would imagine, by the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, ‘open season’ — namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Fauci told NBC’s “Today” show.

Until those vaccines arrive, residents will continue to vie for the limited supply of vaccines in Los Angeles, and health officials continue to remind residents to protect themselves by heeding health orders, avoiding gatherings, and double-masking. With the holiday weekend and Valentine's Day and the Lunar New Year just days away, officials urged residents not to let their guards down, plunging the region back into another surge

"L.A. County has made encouraging progress in all the key indicators this month," Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. "Let us not step backward on our recovery journey. We know from experience that gatherings, parties and the other activities we usually do with non-household members on holidays leads to increases in transmission, hospitalizations and deaths.

"Continuing to slow transmission requires limiting the number of people we interact with," she said. "If we do not gather, we save lives."

Officials worry the reduction in cases will lure residents into complacency right when Los Angeles County appears to be on the brink of new reopenings.

The county reported 3,489 new cases were cases Thursday — a fraction of the daily caseload reported a month ago. There were also 150 coronavirus deaths reported Thursday in Los Angeles County, dozens less than the daily average in recent weeks. The pandemic's overall local death toll reached 18,678 Thursday.

According to state figures, there were 3,604 people hospitalized in the county due to COVID as of Thursday, with 1,067 people in intensive care.

County officials noted that one week ago, there were just under 5,000 people hospitalized due to the virus. The number topped 8,000 in early January.

Despite continued concerns about the lack of vaccine supply, the county plans to expand the eligibility for the shots to various essential workers in two to three weeks, including teachers and other essential workers.

The shots will be offered to workers in three categories: education/child care; food and agriculture; and emergency services and law enforcement. In Los Angeles County, those categories represent roughly 1.3 million people, meaning that even after they become eligible for the shots, it will take weeks to get all of them fully vaccinated, which requires two doses spaced out by three to four weeks.

The expansion of the vaccine eligibility will occur even as the county continues administering shots to the currently eligible populations -- health care workers, residents and staff of nursing and long-term care facilities and residents 65 and over. Ferrer noted Wednesday that, to date, only 20% of residents age 65 and over have received at least one dose of the medication.

"At this point, we'd like to make significant inroads into getting people who are older vaccinated," she said. "... Our hope is that over these next two weeks you're going to see that number go way up in terms of the number of older people who are getting vaccinated. But also it's an acknowledgement that we do have to get started with some of our essential workers. It's gonna be really difficult to wait weeks and weeks and weeks until we complete an entire sector before we move on."

Major pharmacy chains such as CVS will begin administering the vaccine to help increase the rate of vaccinations.

In the meantime, County-operated large-scale vaccination sites will be offering only second doses of the two-dose regimen for the rest of this week. The county-run sites are at the Pomona Fairplex, the Forum in Inglewood, Cal State Northridge, county Office of Education in Downey, Magic Mountain in Valencia, Balboa Sports Complex in Encino and the El Sereno Recreation Center.

City News Service contributed to this report.