LOS ANGELES — With an active surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across L.A. County, Dr. Sharon Balter, who serves as a director at the Department of Public Health, is juggling more challenges than ever in her role managing communicable disease prevention.
“Part of what our unit does is track day-to-day the number of COVID cases there are, who is getting sick, who is most vulnerable, who is dying,” Dr. Balter said.
Her team, comprised of dozens of staffers, updates the county’s numbers each day and because they have their finger on the pulse of the pandemic’s impact on the region, they will be relied on to help guide the rollout of an approved vaccine.
“There’s a lot going on right now and it’s all very exciting. Some of the initial looks at the vaccines have indicated a high degree of efficacy,” Dr. Balter said. “We believe we could get the vaccine as soon as this month to be given to health care workers and front-line workers.”
Dr. Balter added that right now is prep time and the county has been working with the state for months to devise a vaccine distribution strategy.
Among the biggest hurdles is planning for the transport and storage of a vaccine that requires ultra-cold storage, like Pfizer’s experimental vaccine which needs to be frozen at -80 degrees Celsius and will likely be first to get the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that California will receive 327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in December.
“The county is getting five freezers and has an additional three from the state that will be positioned around the county. But we’ll also be working very closely with our partners around the county that have the ability to freeze at this temperature,” Dr. Balter said.
One of those partners is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which already has a bank of freezers that can dip down to the -80 degree Celsius mark.
Dr. Rita Shane, the hospital’s Chief Pharmacy Officer, will help oversee the vaccine’s distribution at Cedars.
“Maintaining temperature is obviously first and foremost with the vaccines. They are going to be shipped with a device that will ensure they maintain their temperature throughout shipment and we will immediately transfer those into these ultra-cold freezers,” Shane said.
Dr. Shane said her team has been doing what basically accounts to freezer math: trying to determine how many doses and vials can fit in their freezers safely.
“The way the Pfizer vaccine is getting shipped, you may have heard, is the pizza box so that will have 975 doses, five doses per vial of vaccine so we’ve actually gone through calculations of how many can fit in a freezer,” Shane said, adding that their current calculations stand between 100-150,000 doses.
None of those pizza boxes will be stored long, according to county officials.
Dr. Balter said the goal is to get the vaccine in and then immediately out to inoculation sites as quickly as possible.
“We expect that as soon as it arrives we‘ll be giving it to people. But it’s not going to sit for a long time because the need is so great,” Dr. Balter said.