Los Angeles County’s road to recovery hit a slight speed bump on Tuesday, April 13, as the state reported its adjusted daily coronavirus case rate slightly increased from 3.1 new cases per 100,000 people to 3.2 new cases.
The adjusted case rates reported by the state are used to determine when counties can advance to the next color-coded tier and then increase capacity based on the framework for reopening. On June 15, those color-coded tiers will be abolished if the state determines it has enough vaccine supply. But until then L.A. County will need to reach less than 2 cases per 100,000 people to qualify for the yellow tier, allowing 50% capacity at indoor restaurants and a maximum 200 people at private gatherings.
Cases have fallen precipitously in the state’s most populous county since peaking in February. On Tuesday, the county reported 23 new deaths and 448 new cases. So far, 23,498 people have lost their lives in L.A. County to COVID-19 and 1,226,596 have tested positive.
In another sign that the county’s decline in cases is plateauing, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in L.A. County rose slightly to 493 from 471 the day before, based on the state’s dashboard that reports a day earlier than the county.
Among cities operating independent health departments: Pasadena reported just two new cases on Tuesday, bringing its total to 11,180; the city’s death toll remained at 339. Two Long Beach residents died from coronavirus-related causes, officials announced, bringing the city’s death toll to 922; 29 more cases raised the city’s total to 52,525 since the pandemic began.
Also Tuesday, the City of L.A. took over operations at the mass vaccination site at Cal State University Los Angeles, serving long lines of eager shot-seekers.
The L.A. Fire Department is now running the site, officials said, supported by staff from Community Organized Relief Effort, as well as staff contracted locally for the site through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, in tandem with the California Office of Emergency Management, ran the site from February until last week.
Under FEMA’s operation, the East L.A. site — and its associated mobile vaccination clinics — administered more than 300,000 doses. The Cal State parking-structure clinic — and its sister site in Oakland — got their vaccine batches directly from the federal government. County and city sites get their allocations from the state, which gets them from the federal government.
The site opened as an eight-week pilot project. A team of more than 200 soldiers, based at Fort Carson in Colorado, were deployed to Southern California to help establish and staff the complex. Officials said two-thirds of the clinic’s doses were administered to people in underserved and at-risk communities.
The site had been set to close on April 11, but last month L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said his city would take over this week.
On Tuesday, hundreds waited in line on foot for COVID-19 vaccine shots in a parking garage. Later in the day, the wait was anywhere from a half hour to 90 minutes, vaccine-seekers said. It was unclear whether the delays were caused by the transition in operation. Mayor Garcetti’s office did not returns calls for comment, and officials on site would not answer questions.
Corey Chow, who waited in line around 4 p.m. Tuesday said the process took about an hour and a half. “Then of course the 15 minutes after the shot,” Chow added, describing the “cool down” period when staff makes certain that vaccinated residents do not experience serious side effects.
Travis Blecha said he chose the CSULA site because it was the only appointment he could get via the state’s MyTurn appointment app. “They are hard to find,” he said.
Darlene Toledo drove from Sylmar because it was the soonest she could reserve a slot. Toledo said, “It did seem a little chaotic, the line winds around the parking lot and up and down stairs over three floors.”
SCNG staffers Brittany Murray and Mark McGreal contributed to this report.
