LA County Has Given Out 51% Of COVID Vaccines Received So Far
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - Los Angeles County has administered about 51 percent of the coronavirus vaccines it has received so far, with more doses expected to come this week, health officials announced.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a news briefing Tuesday that as of the end of last week, the county had received 685,000 vaccine doses. Nearly 350,000 of the doses have been administered.
The county is expected to receive a total of 168,000 more doses Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
Ferrer said there are adequate vaccine supplies to get through this week's appointments, about 50,000 of them at the public sites, but the county has no idea how many more doses it'll be getting next week.
The department Tuesday reported 7,902 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 186 more deaths, bringing countywide totals to 1,031,874 cases and 14,122 deaths.
People who want to schedule appointments can do so online. People without a computer or internet can call 833-540- 0473 to make appointments. Officials urged people to use the online system as much as possible because there will likely be long waits on the phone.
But the demand for the vaccine apparently outpaced the online appointment system's ability to handle the load. Not long after county officials formally announced the appointment website Tuesday afternoon, it crashed. County officials announced on Twitter that the website and the hotline were "fielding thousands of calls and users, and experiencing technical difficulties."
Some web users reported they were unable to access the system at all. Others received a message that the site was undergoing maintenance, while others were able to start the process only to be kicked out of the system and forced to start over.
County officials said they were working to resolve the issues.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)