Orange County Crosses 1 Million Mark of Administered Vaccines

A health care worker prepares the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Lestonnac Health Clinic in Orange, Calif., on March 9, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Orange County, California, has administered more than 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in what one supervisor calls “a major milestone” in the region’s inoculation efforts.

Local health workers have administered 1,037,074 doses, according to the latest data available on a state website March 16. Since those receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots to be fully protected against the virus, the figure doesn’t reflect the number of residents who are fully inoculated.

“Reaching the 1 million mark for vaccinations in Orange County is a huge milestone,” Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett told The Epoch Times on March 16. “That means that essentially one-third of our county population has been vaccinated” at least with the first dose.

“Vaccinations have been going very well, basically every dose that is sent to our county to gets administered into somebody’s arm as quickly as possible. The challenge has been that we’re not receiving adequate amounts of vaccine doses. We have the bandwidth to increase capacity for vaccinations by two, three, or four times but we just don’t have the vaccine doses,” she said.

While it took about three months to reach the current milestone, the next million is likely to come faster due to the recently released Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which requires a single shot, as well as the opening of more super Points of Dispensing (POD) sites.

Approximately 10,000 people are being vaccinated per day across the county, Bartlett said, adding that the figure includes patients from POD sites, hospitals, and pharmacies.

“There’s no particular goal,” Bartlett said when asked if there was a number of vaccinations per day they were looking to accomplish. “We'll take every vaccine dose we can get coming to our county and get it administered as quickly as possible.”

Current POD sites in the county include Disneyland in Anaheim, the Anaheim Convention Center, Soka University in Aliso Viejo, Santa Ana College, and Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove.

Addressing concerns that Othena, the county’s app and website for scheduling vaccination appointments, was going to be removed in exchange for the state’s “My Turn” software, Bartlett said Othena is likely here to stay for now.

“I believe Orange County will be continuing to utilize the Othena system,” she said. “It is the most stable system in place, relative to people registering and scheduling appointments. It’s much more reliable from what I understand, versus the My Turn system at the state level.”