Orange County opens coronavirus vaccinations to anyone 65 and older - OCRegister

Any Orange County resident age 65 and older is now eligible to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, county health officials said Tuesday, Jan. 12.

People age 75 and older were recently given preference by the OC Health Care Agency as it starts up the vaccination campaign’s next stage, but after reviewing some alarming statistics on who is hospitalized and in intensive care because of COVID-19, the county’s vaccine task force late Sunday recommended expanding vaccinations to people 65 and older, County Health Officer Dr. Clayton Chau told the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

Data from about 13 O.C. hospitals, which are providing the bulk of care to COVID-19 patients in the county, showed a majority of people who are hospitalized, as well as most of those requiring intensive care and in need of a ventilator, are 61 or older, Chau said.

As of Sunday, people over 60 accounted for 54% of COVID-19 patients in those hospitals, 72% of those in ICUs, and nearly the same percentage of patients on ventilators, he said. About 75% of O.C. residents who have died of the coronavirus were 65 or older.

“My goal is to make sure that we vaccinate the most vulnerable so we can prevent them from going into the hospital, going into the ICU, and most importantly, prevent them from dying,” Chau said.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in its guidelines the vaccine be made available to those 65 and older and California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said similar state rules could be coming quickly.

For now, Chau is advising people to contact their doctor or health provider to ask about getting inoculated. The county also is urging residents to plan to use a new app it helped develop called Othena, but the app is not yet allowing people to make vaccination appointments.

It was not clear Tuesday when vaccine appointments could be initiated by people who qualify in current phases without an invitation from the OC Health Care Agency’s partner organizations or private providers such as Kaiser Permanente, the county’s largest.

This week the county is opening a large-scale vaccination site at Disneyland, expected to be the first of five such operations. Receiving a vaccination at the site requires an appointment.

Anyone in the eligible age range will need an appointment initiated by organizations that serve older adults and are partnering with the county.

“There will also be targeted communications to these older adult communities,” the OC Health Care Agency’s Vaccination Distribution website says. The shots will be administered at both mass vaccination sites and smaller sites that will be deployed closer to where seniors live.

It remained unclear Tuesday if the rollout to older residents had already begun as the previously targeted health care professionals continued to queue up at invite-only vaccination sites in Anaheim, Irvine and Huntington Beach, where shots began last week.

The announcement came amid mounting pressure on health departments nationwide to get more needles into more arms.

Reflecting the previous emphasis on inoculating health care workers and those in nursing homes and similar facilities, Orange County data through Jan. 8 showed that out of more than 56,000 vaccinations given, about 4,500 were received by people 65 and older.

Chau told members of the vaccine task force during an emergency meeting Sunday that the county had administered roughly half of its supply of vaccines, noting that data provided to him by the state could be outdated due to slow reporting.

By that point, Orange County was ahead of the state as a whole, which had administered about a third of its vaccines, Chau told the group during the virtual meeting.

How quickly the county opens more vaccine “super sites” will depend on the quantity of vaccine the county can obtain, but officials have set a July 4 target to have effectively vaccinated everyone in the county. Chau told county supervisors Tuesday meeting that goal will require ramping up to at least 7,500 vaccinations a day.

“We need to do something fast in our community” he said. “It is not just about just reopening our economy, it is about taking care of our vulnerable communities.”

County officials encourage all residents to register at othena.com/individuals.php to be notified when the Othena app has appointments available and is ready for their use.

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