How Pasadena Differs from L.A. County in Administering COVID-19 Vaccinations

In California, anyone over 65 years old is eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine. 

But both Pasadena and L.A. County are far short of having enough doses for every eligible person.

The county prioritizes those people getting second doses, so fewer people are receiving their first-round injection, and scheduling a second dose has become complicated and problematic.

“Everybody who’s given a first dose is guaranteed that they will get allocated that second dose,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer recently told LAist.

However, Ferrer said Wednesday that her department needs four million doses to vaccinate every resident currently eligible. Instead, the county has received fewer than 900,000 so far.

“We just are not receiving enough vaccine doses to move as quickly as we, and you, would like us to,” Ferrer said.

In Pasadena, which has its own public health department, everyone who receives the first dose of the Moderna vaccine at a city location is given an appointment 28 days later for a second dose, said city Public Information Officer Lisa Derderian.

But unlike L.A. County, which prioritizes second doses at the expense of vaccinating new people, Pasadena is pushing first-time doses out the door as quickly as possible and expecting that vaccine distribution will be ramped up in time to provide second doses to people who need them in a few weeks.

Derderian said Pasadena chose to pursue this strategy to try to comply with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mandate to make vaccines available to everyone over 65.

“We don’t have a choice,” Derderian said. The state, she added, is “telling you not to save for the second dose and use what you have on hand immediately.”

If health officials in Pasadena, where city leaders are asking the state to turn the Rose Bowl into a mega vaccination site, don’t receive sufficient numbers of vaccine for second doses, Derderian said the city may need to contact people to delay their appointment.

Derderian said the city was waiting on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about how long they could delay a second dose.

Currently, the CDC states patients should get their second shot “as close to the recommended three-week or one-month interval as possible. However, there is no maximum interval between the first and second doses for either vaccine. You should not get the second dose earlier than the recommended interval.”

Experts say people who only have one dose have much lower protection from the virus than if they had both of the doses.

For more on Pasadena’s vaccine procedures, visit https://www.cityofpasadena.net/public-health/covid-19-vaccine/#vaccine-allocation-phases