Hospital staff vaccinated
Frontline workers at AVH get first doses
LANCASTER — Antelope Valley Hospital frontline workers were the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to prevent COVID-19 early Wednesday.
The vaccine will be administered as a two-dose series, three weeks apart. Staff working in areas with direct patient contact and/or highrisk exposure will be given priority to receive the vaccine, including environmental services which includes custodial staff. The hospital will coordinate with the various departments in order to avoid large groups and to maintain social distancing, the hospital announced.
Dr. Pramod Kadambi, AV Hospital’s chief of staff was the first to receive the vaccine.
“Our primary goal is to protect our staff, and making the COVID vaccine accessible was essential. Having our medical leadership pave the way to demonstrate the safety and importance of the vaccine was significant.” AV Hospital CEO Edward Mirzabegian said in a statement. “We were happy and hopeful to see a large turnout of medical staff throughout the day.”
AV Hospital received a limited quantity of the vaccine and will be administering to hospital staff first. Additional information will follow when more vaccine becomes available, the hospital said.
Kaiser Permanente Antelope Valley will receive approximately 600 doses from Los Angeles County. The first vaccinations to frontline health care workers will begin next week.
“We are following CDC distribution guidelines, and the first group receiving the vaccine will be emergency medical service personnel working in our long-term acute care facilities, intensive care units, emergency departments, labor and delivery and COVID units,” Nicol Gerstein, assistant director for Public Affairs, said in an email. “This group of dedicated care providers includes physicians, nurses, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, environmental services staff and ancillary staff.”
A spokesperson for Palmdale Regional Medical Center could not immediately be reached.
The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services plans to begin its vaccination efforts today at three of the hospitals it operates — County-USC, Olive View-UCLA and Harbor-UCLA medical centers. The county says it plans to vaccinate 6,000 front-line workers at the hospitals by Christmas.
Los Angeles County received roughly 83,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, with the doses taken to the nine cold-storage sites for distribution to 83 acute-care hospitals across the county. Health care workers are atop the priority list for receiving the vaccine.
The vaccine, which received federal approval over the weekend for immediate use, is said to be 95% effective at preventing the virus.
Statewide, 327,600 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were expected to arrive this week, with another 393,900 doses from Pfizer next week, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Pending federal approval of Moderna’s vaccination, the state is expected to receive 672,600 doses of that vaccine by the end of the month.
The state hopes to receive as many as 2.16 million total doses by the end of the year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Thursday recommended that the Moderna vaccine be approved for use — a key hurdle in its eventual approval for circulation.
Health-care workers and residents and staff of skilled nursing facilities and long-term care facilities are all included in what is known as Phase 1A of the vaccination-distribution program, meaning they will receive the first doses. Newsom said that group includes about 3 million people statewide.
Phase 1B of the program will be “essential workers,’’ a category estimated to include 8 million people, Newsom said. Exact guidelines of what constitutes an “essential worker’’ and which ones will have the highest priority for vaccines have not been finalized.
Los Angeles County’s initial allotment of Pfizer vaccine was expected to be 82,875 doses, a population-based percentage of the state allocation, according to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
Last week, Ferrer said the county hopes to receive its second allotment — roughly 250,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, pending final FDA approval — early next week. But she said Wednesday the timing and size of the county’s next allotment of vaccine had not yet been finalized, likely due to uncertainty with the federal approval process.
Much of the second dose allotment will be distributed directly skilled nursing facilities, allowing them to administer it right away instead of waiting for a federal distribution agreement with CVS and
Walgreens to begin on about Dec. 28.
Long-term care facilities will still receive the vaccine through CVS and Walgreens.
The Moderna vaccine does not require the same ultra-cold storage as the Pfizer vaccine.
County officials said earlier they anticipate receiving another 150,000 doses of vaccine by the end of December, followed by weekly allotments of 250,000 beginning in January. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both require two doses, separated by about three weeks. With the county planning to vaccinate 6 million people in six months, that equates to 12 million doses of vaccine.
After the distribution of vaccines to health care workers, skilled nursing facilities and long-term care staff and residents is completed, followed by ``essential workers,’’ priority will then move to people at highest risk of severe illness from the virus, such as seniors or those with underlying health conditions.
Distribution to the general public will follow, but the timeline on when that will occur remains cloudy.