Despite surge, officials upbeat about COVID-19 vaccines
Information on COVID-19 can be found on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health website, publichealth.lacounty.gov.
Michele Willer-Allred, Staff Reporter – 9:28 am PST – January 2, 2021 – Malibu Surfside News
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials are expecting the new year to be a lot better than 2020, especially with the recent arrival and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I don’t think we’re going to see the light early, but I’m hopeful that if we are successful in implementing this mass vaccine campaign, by the summer months we could be back to a more normal or what we consider more normal way of life,” Dr. Paul Simon, chief science officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said during a recent vaccine virtual town hall meeting.
Simon joined Dr. Muntu Davis, county health officer, and Dr. Seira Kurian, director of the county’s Division of Medical Affairs.
The event, which was a chance for the public to learn about the new COVID-19 vaccine and ask questions, was moderated by Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the College of Medicine at Charles R. Drew University.
The panel cautioned that the public shouldn’t be letting down their guard just yet.
Davis issued a dire warning, saying L.A. County is in the middle of a terrible surge of COVID-19 cases and every day the county is setting records for numbers of new cases and filling up ICU beds in hospitals.
“It can be much better than it is right now if more people were following the public health guidance and recommendations,” Davis said.
He noted that following those safety protocols along with people being immunized with the vaccine “will get us to a place where we can open up our economy, get more people back to work, and get our kids back to school sooner rather than later.”
The vaccine’s arrival and distribution
Los Angeles County received its first shipment Dec. 11 containing more than 82,875 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which was recently authorized by the Federal Drug Administration. A second shipment was expected soon.
“(The vaccination effort) will be a massive undertaking, a scale at which many would argue is unprecedented, given the time urgency of vaccinating millions of people in the county and beyond,” said Kurian, one of the leaders in L.A. County for the vaccine planning effort.
The first shipments are being used to vaccinate those in Phase 1A: frontline healthcare workers and those with the highest risk of exposure to COVID-19, including residents and healthcare workers in long-term care facilities.
Essential workers, those in high-risk groups and those with health conditions are included in the next phases.
Kurian said an advisory committee on immunization practices will be meeting on Sunday, Dec. 20 to decide priorities in future phases.
“This is a dynamic situation, and we know there may be bumps along the way, but our commitment is to ensure vaccines are distributed in a fair and equitable manner,” said Kurian, adding that zip code and neighborhood data are being used to make sure the distribution is equitable, especially to low-income communities.
Kurian added that availability to other members of the public is dependent on how many more vaccines are approved and the production schedules of various manufacturers.
“Our best estimates at this time is the general public vaccinations will be made available possibly in the spring or early summer,” she said
A vaccine by Moderna found to be 95 percent effective with the same mild to moderate symptoms has been granted emergency-use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Both vaccines require two doses, four weeks apart, though a new vaccine is in the works requiring one dose, according to Simon.
What is in the vaccine?
Davis emphasized that the vaccine is not itself the virus being injected into people.
“This is really just (protein) produced by the virus, and once it’s in your body, it produces the antibodies, which will fight the virus if you get infected and you won’t be able to transmit it,” said Davis.
Safety studies and risks
The vaccine was studied in a clinical trial of more than 4,000 volunteers over the age of 16 and found to be 95 percent effective.
Simon said the vaccine was also deemed safe for use after careful review by an advisory panel to the FDA, and many of those vaccinated only developed mild to moderate symptoms, including soreness at injection site, fatigue, muscle aches and fever, which lasted up to seven days.
Simon said because trials only followed participants for two months, there are still important questions that remain to be answered and need to be studied, including how long does protection last, and if they prevent asymptomatic infection and spread of the virus to others.
Simon also said that early rollout of the Pfizer vaccine resulted in several allergic reactions. Anaphylactic shock has been reported in England and one case in the U.S., and he recommended anyone with a history of anaphylactic shock should delay getting vaccinated.
Other vaccines are currently being developed and analyzed, and may be eligible for approval early next year.
“I want to assure you that although (the) timeline evaluating and approving vaccines (has) been greatly condensed, all of the essential steps in the vaccine approval process have been maintained,” Simon said.
He did say that current vaccine trials focused on adolescents and adults, but that trials will be expanded to children and pregnant women.
“We know that children, even if a vaccination were available, will probably be prioritized below many groups of adults because they are at a slightly lower risk of complications,” Simon said.
Herd immunity and back to normal
Davis said that while the arrival of the vaccine offers us some hope, we are still many months from having enough people vaccinated to see the COVID-19 virus begin to diminish to the point where daily life can return to normal.
He said there is a general consensus in the public health community that between 75 to 85 percent of the U.S. population must receive the vaccine in order to see the virus disappear through herd immunity via immunization.
He said it’s been done before with smallpox and the measles and can be done again with COVID-19 if enough people get the vaccine.
Other questions asked
Should people still get vaccinated if they already tested positive?
Davis said yes, people should still be vaccinated after testing positive. However, he said there is fairly good documented evidence that a person is protected for at least 90 days after having COVID-19.
What about travel?
Davis said being vaccinated should help with reducing risk of serious illness, but it is still being reviewed whether one can be asymptomatic and still transmit it to others. He advised those who have been vaccinated to still wear face coverings and follow social distancing protocols.
Should someone of childbearing age be worried about the long term effects of the vaccine on fertility?
Simon said the answer to that question can’t be directly answered from vaccine trials, since they’ve only been studied for two months so far after vaccination.
The good news, he said, is that with every other vaccine, adverse reactions usually show up right after the vaccination.
“I can’t say with 100 percent assurance that there’s nothing to worry about, but I can say based on our past experience with other vaccines, it would seem that this is probably not a risk (affecting pregnancy,” Simon said.
What about the flu shot?
Davis said he has seen people infected with both the flu and COVID-19. However, he said the influenza virus mutates quite a bit, so flu vaccinations can vary year to year with effectiveness.
Simon added though that if one gets a flu shot, they’re more likely to have mild illness and a lot less likely to get severe disease as a result of the flu.
Simon encouraged everyone over the age of six months to get the flu vaccine each year.
If one doesn’t have insurance, can they still get the COVID-19 vaccine and how much will it cost?
“The short answer is yes. There is no cost to the individual to get the vaccine,” Kurian said, adding that there still might be an administrative charge to insurance companies if one does have insurance.
Will the vaccine be required for students to return to school in California?
Simon said it’s still too early to predict what the policy will be with school vaccinations, because there’s still not a good understanding how the virus mutates over time.
“We’re particularly concerned about teachers, but I think they will be prioritized (for vaccination) fairly high up because we know how important it is to get schools back open,” said Simon. “I think one of the barriers is teachers not feeling safe, and justifiably so.”
At the end of the town hall, Prothrow-Stith said that society has learned that leadership matters quite a lot, and that the community is thankful to have the doctors on the panel working on health issues in Los Angeles County.