33 New Coronavirus Cases Reported in Pasadena on Sunday

Pasadena officials on Sunday reported 33 new COVID-19 cases and three deaths.

All told, there have been 10,473 cases and 275 deaths. 

At Huntington Hospital, 24 of the hospital’s 127 COVID-19 patients were battling the virus in an intensive care unit.

Meanwhile, county officials on Friday reported slow but steady progress in COVID-19 vaccination efforts but said less than 3% of the population has been fully vaccinated, and appointments for first doses will be difficult to come by next week.

At the five county-operated large-scale vaccination sites, a limited number of first doses will be administered on Monday, with the rest of the week’s appointments reserved solely for people in need of their second dose of the medication, according to Dr. Paul Simon, chief science officer for the county health department.

Simon said while the issue applies solely to the county’s five mega-sites, residents may run into issues at other locations, as all providers are dealing with short supplies of vaccines.

“Unfortunately, the biggest issue we continue to face in our ability to vaccinate is the scarcity of supply and variability in the amount of vaccine we receive from week-to-week,” Simon said. “This has been an issue across the country and it makes planning challenging.”

According to Simon, the most recent figures indicate that more than 1.05 million vaccine doses have been administered in the county, including slightly more than 104,000 second doses. That means 2.6% of the county’s population of people 16 and older have been fully vaccinated. About 11% of those in the 16-and-over population have received at least one dose.

The slow progress of the vaccination program has led to some residents getting creative in finding ways to manipulate the appointment system to get access to the shots.

Some people who aren’t yet eligible to get the vaccine have taken to lingering at vaccination sites on the slight chance there will be leftover doses at the end of the day that must be administered to avoid wasting them.

County Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said there have also been issues with people claiming to be caretakers of disabled children and showing up at vaccine sites with generic, photocopied letters identifying them as such.

Simon outlined another way some people have tried to jump the line to get vaccines. According to Simon, people who received emails from the county about scheduling an appointment for a second dose of the vaccine have been sharing the unique web link included in the emails with friends. Those people “are then scheduling a first-dose appointment even though they are not eligible to be vaccinated at this time,” he said.