COVID In LA: Newsom Visits Vaccine Sites, Delayed Doses En Route

LOS ANGELES, CA — All six Los Angeles-run coronavirus vaccination sites faced closure over the weekend when a winter storm out of the east delayed a vaccine shipment amid an already stalled rollout. But Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Sunday that those doses were finally shipped and would arrive Tuesday.

The city-run vaccination sites are set to resume operations on Tuesday, he said, adding that all appointments from Friday and Saturday would be rescheduled immediately.

Those who received a first dose of the vaccine from a city-run site Jan. 24-30 will automatically be booked for a second dose appointment this week, according to Carbon health. County-run sites and mobile sites were unaffected by the shipment delay, officials said.

A rapidly dwindling amount of COVID-19 cases reported in Los Angeles has signaled that hope may finally be on the horizon for California's coronavirus epicenter.

The county reported 1,465 new cases and 93 deaths on Sunday, much lower numbers than the day before — although reporting delays are known to be a factor on weekends. Statewide, only 6,760 cases were reported on Sunday — 85 percent below the mid-December peak of about 54,000 in one day.

And while Los Angeles and the state have been picking up the pace of a relatively sluggish vaccine rollout, California has been plagued with a massive dosage deficit.

"At the end of the day, there just aren't enough Pfizer vaccines, there aren't enough Moderna vaccines," Gov. Gavin Newsom said, speaking from a news conference in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Newsom spent Sunday afternoon in the Southland visiting two mobile vaccination sites — one in Boyle Heights and the other in Inglewood — where he touted the state's efforts to bolster the vaccine rollout and discussed efforts to vaccinate disproportionately impacted communities in Los Angeles.

His visit came as the county continues to mitigate equity issues in the distribution of vaccines among the area's Black, Latino and Asian populations.

In Los Angeles, data published Friday showed that vaccinates among eligible Black residents lagged far behind other populations. Black residents represented just 5.2 percent of all people who had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of mid-February, while 33.5 percent were white, 23.1 percent Latino and 19.1 percent Asian.

Only 24 percent of Black residents aged 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to 42.8 percent of white residents 65 and up.

"Our county and in particular our Latinx residents have been absolutely devastated by COVID-19," said Hilda Solis, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, as she visited another new vaccination site at Cal State Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The average coronavirus death rate among Latinos In Los Angeles County peaked in mid-January — a daily rate of 48 per 100,000 Latino residents. Black residents in the same time frame were dying from the disease at a rate of 23 deaths per 100,00 while Asian Americans were dying at a rate of 20 per 100,000, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"It's particularly fitting that this state and federal vaccination center is opening here on the campus of Cal State L.A.," said Bill Covino, CSULA's president said of the university becoming a vaccination site. "Starting today, it's actually happening right behind me, communities that are among the hardest hit by the pandemic are coming here to Cal State LA for vaccinations."

Going forward, California will have a new system managed by Blue Shield, which will handle delivering, tracking and scheduling coronavirus vaccines. The new system will first be used in Riverside, Kings, Imperial, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin and Stanislaus, Fresno and Kern counties.

Los Angeles will be included in the next group of counties to receive the system, beginning March 3, officials said.

On Friday, Newsom announced that the Golden State will set aside 10 percent of its weekly vaccine allotment for teachers, school staff and childcare providers. The decision was made in an effort to accelerate school reopenings and quell safety concerns.

Health officials have been warning of a challenging month ahead with vaccines still scarce in Los Angeles. The impacted appointment system is also expected to get even more crowded March 1 when essential workers such as teachers, food service workers and law enforcement become eligible.

In mid-March, everyone aged 16 and over with a serious underlying health condition will also join that list.

More than 7.3 million doses have been administered statewide, Newsom said Sunday. Meanwhile, the positivity rate in Los Angeles and statewide has been falling each week, driving hospitalizations down as well.

But as cases continue on a downward trajectory, some experts have begun to express the possibility that things could finally be looking up.

"I could be wrong, but I don’t think we’re going to see a big fourth surge," Dr. Paul Offit told the Los Angeles Times. Offit is a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. "I think we’ve seen the worst of it."

Though experts still warn that it's too soon to relax prevention measures just yet with the presence of several variants that are still a cause for concern, especially in Southern California.

On Saturday, two additional cases of the coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 were detected in Los Angeles. The variant was first discovered in the United Kingdom is known to be at least 50 percent more transmissible.

The U.K. variant is on track to become the dominant strain in the United States by March, experts have said. Its presence could disrupt a favorable trajectory in the Southland and statewide.

"That's going to counteract things somewhat," Dr. John Swartzberg told Patch last week. Swartzberg is a professor of vaccinology and infectious disease at the University of California, Berkeley. "So we need to put a real push on [getting vaccinated] because we're really racing with this virus. The virus is going to continue to produce mutants as long as it can find a susceptible host. So we need to be doubling down on everything that we're doing. So, I would say, get vaccinated as quickly as you possibly can."

The South African variant was detected in the Bay Area but has not yet been found in the Southland. Early reports show that this particular variant may diminish the effectiveness of vaccines, but scientists are still working to confirm this.

"The vaccines seem to be less effective [against the South African variant] but still provide a level of protection that should prevent most people from getting serious disease," said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. "So while the antibodies generated don't bind as well to that variant, they bind well enough that most people should still be protected from disease," he said in an earlier interview with Patch.

The Associated Press, City News Service and Patch staffer Kat Schuster contributed to this report.

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