Los Angeles County has suffered massive cases of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, and now they are going to use technology to help them monitor the spread of the virus by tracking the residents and helping them prove their vaccination records.
Los Angeles COVID-19 app
According to Bloomberg, the public health department has teamed up with Healthvana, to create an app that will store vaccination records in Apple or Google wallets.
The app will remind residents to also get a second shot while providing them with a vaccination record to prove to schools, public transports, airlines or whatever establishment needs it, as stated by Healthvana CEO Ramin Bastani.
Pfizer has allocated 82,875 COVID-19 vaccine doses in Los Angeles, and almost half have been distributed to emergency workers, long-term facility residents and health service providers.
However, LA County is one of the largest in the United States and is currently home to more than 10 million people, so once the vaccinations are increased in 2021, keeping track of those who got the shot will be very difficult. Aside from that, deaths in the county are approaching 10,000, so clinics and hospitals are already so overwhelmed and it is expected to double in January 2021.
LA County Department of Public Health's Claire Jarashow stated that they are very concerned and they want people to come back for the second dose of vaccine. She said that they don't have the capacity to be doing hundreds of medical record requests to find the first doses of people and to trace when they would need their second shot.
It is still not clear when the app will be available or how it will work once it goes live. Healthvana already offers a contact tracing app for LA County residents, together with patient portals to check their test results and other services related to COVID-19.
Other companies such as IBM and non-profit organizations are also working on digital vaccine passports that will allow people to travel or enter stadiums, movie theaters and other establishments by showing that they have been vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccine
According to The New York Times, the polls done by Gallup, the Pew Research Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that vaccine acceptance rates increased from 50% to more than 60%. In one poll, it showed that 70% of Americans are willing to get vaccinated.
The recent poll approaches the threshold that scientists have deemed necessary to start the process of herd immunity, where enough of the population is immune to the virus and the spread of the coronavirus slowly recedes.
With more than 19 million COVID-19 cases in the country and more than 333,000 Americans dead due to the pandemic, more people than ever have now been affected by the virus. The reality might also be a factor to some to reconsider getting the vaccine.
Rupali Limaye, an expert on vaccine behavior at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told The New York Times that more people have been affected or infected by COVID-19. He added that people now want to go back to their normal lives.
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Written by Sieeka Khan
