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Moviegoers wait for a film to start at the AMC 16 theater, Monday, March 15, 2021, in Burbank, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
LOS ANGELES, CA A year after Los Angeles County issued its first public health order closing restaurants and banning gatherings to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the region is finally close to returning to normal.
Restaurants and theaters can, once again, offer indoor-service at limited capacity, and just a day after they were allowed to reopen, there are signs that Los Angeles could soon reach the threshold for another round of openings. Hospitalizations and daily new cases of COVID-19 are continuing to fall along with the test positivity rate. If the trend continues, Los Angeles could quickly be eligible for the state s less restrictive orange tier in the Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
If the past few months have done nothing else, they’ve shown definitively that California’s lurching effort to vaccinate its citizens against COVID-19 will always come down to two factors: supply and logistics. Without an effective distribution plan, a large inventory doesn’t mean much. Without enough vaccine, however, nothing else matters.
Given that context, it is bewildering to consider recent events. First, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that the next few weeks will be “a constrained environment in terms of access to vaccine” governor-speak for a shortage of doses. Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer went further, saying no vaccine cavalry would be arriving from Johnson & Johnson for at least two weeks due to production issues.
Vaccine Inequity Prevalent in Hawaiian Gardens
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BY BRIAN HEWS • March 16, 2021
The effects of the vaccine inequity are being felt in the tiny town of Hawaiian Gardens. The closest vaccination site and it’s 10 miles away in Downey and that’s causing problems for many residents in the city.
As of this week only 9% of Hawaiian Gardens residents have been vaccinated compared to 18% in Lakewood and nearly 27% in Cerritos.
LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer is in favor of providers giving out the shots instead of “putting a vaccination site in every neighborhood. Our strategy has been to figure out ways to help them build their capacity.”
The county entered the red tier which allowed the resumption of indoor dining and the reopening of movie theaters and indoor fitness centers, all at limited capacity thanks to the daily case rate averaging less than 10 per 100,000 residents for two weeks.
With the rate now falling to 4.1 per 100,000 residents, the county finds itself in striking distance of possibly advancing to the next tier, orange. To enter that tier, a county must have a daily case rate of 3.9 per 100,000 residents or better for two consecutive weeks.
Reaching the orange tier would allow the county to lift all capacity limits at retail stores and shopping malls, while raising the allowable capacity at other locations, such as museums, movie theaters, aquariums, churches, fitness centers and restaurants. The orange tier would also authorize a reopening of bars for outdoor service and limited indoor service at wineries and breweries.