Driven by “pandemic fatigue” and Thanksgiving gatherings, COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations have surged in Los Angeles County to unprecedented levels. During the last week of November, the County logged an average of about 5,900 new cases a day; on Dec. 16, that number nearly quadrupled. Other metrics like hospitalizations and deaths lag behind case numbers, and the County has started seeing a precipitous rise in both. Since Nov. 9, average daily deaths have shot up nearly 600 percent, from an average of 12 per day to more than 70. Just before Thanksgiving, hospitals admitted nearly 300 new patients with the Novel Coronavirus a day; now, the County is seeing 600 new patients a day requiring hospitalization. All of this has public health officials eying the upcoming Christmas holiday with dread.
But as hospital and ICU capacity fill up, Christmas has come early to healthcare workers and residents of assisted living facilities in the County. This week saw the arrival of the new Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to hospitals around the County, fresh from the company’s manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Nine designated sites in Los Angeles County have received an allotment of the vaccine. Each site is equipped with the ultra-cold storage facilities necessary to keep the vaccine viable. Those sites will then send the vaccine to 83 acute-care hospitals across the County, including UCLA, Providence St. John’s, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Cedars-Sinai. Major healthcare providers such as UCLA Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Cedars-Sinai have started inoculating frontline medical staff, marking what experts hope is the beginning of the end of this pandemic.
