City Reports 2 New COVID-19 Cases Sunday; No Fatalities

City officials reported two new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday and no new deaths.

The latest numbers take the city cases to 11,171 and 339 fatalities. 

Huntington Hospital’s intensive care unit remains COVID-19 free, with 10 infected patients being treated in the hospital.

Meanwhile, with COVID-19 vaccine eligibility set to expand to everyone 16 and over on Thursday, Los Angeles County will see a dip in its supply of doses due to what is expected to be a temporary shortfall in the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

But while the decline in the county-controlled supply is concerning — and poorly timed — there are still expected to be about a half-million available doses in the county, thanks to other non-county or city providers who receive direct allocations from the state and federal governments.

“Taken together, we estimate that well over 500,000 doses of vaccine will be allocated to vaccination sites across the county next week,” said Dr. Paul Simon, chief science officer for the county Health Department.

“Now that we have expanded eligibility for vaccinations to all adults 50 and older and will soon be expanding to all adults and adolescents down to age 16 effective April 15, I want to urge all employers to give your employees time to get vaccinated,” Simon said. 

“We expect a rush for appointments in the coming weeks and employees will need as much flexibility as possible to navigate this process and get their vaccinations as soon as possible.”

The county’s allocation of vaccines for next week is expected to total 323,470, Simon said. That’s a roughly 74,000-dose drop from this week, with the reduction due to a major drop in availability of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine. The county received about 97,000 doses of that vaccine this week, but will only receive about 20,000 next week.

Simon said the county’s allocations of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will both increase, but not enough to make up for the Johnson & Johnson dropoff. Simon said he remains confident that the Johnson & Johnson supply will rebound in coming weeks, and overall the county is on track to get much of the adult population vaccinated by early summer.

“At the pace we’re going, we will be able to get where we want to be by late June, as long as people continue to be present for a vaccination,” Simon said. “… But over a several-week period as things open up — and we’ve seen this in the past as other groups became newly eligible — there is that rush over a period of a week or two, and there’s just no getting around that.

“So I think we will be urging the public to be patient, but we are confident we will be able to serve everybody’s needs over the coming weeks,” Simon said.