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XLA County Is Gearing Up for Another Wave of Vaccines. Here’s What To Expect
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
When COVID vaccines first arrived in Southern California, lines at clinics often snaked around the block and online booking was near impossible. With booster shots for COVID likely to become available in the coming month, officials are scrambling to get infrastructure in place to prepare for the onslaught.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve use of the shots in the coming weeks and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention will likely lay out an inoculation plan. With the Biden administration promising a Sept. 20 rollout date for booster shots, officials are trying to avoid a repeat of those early days.
"Here in L.A. County we're doing all the planning now, so that depending on the recommendations coming out from the CDC and the FDA we will be ready here," said Barbara Ferrer, the director of the Department of Public Health.
Neither Ferrer nor the county has laid out those plans in detail yet. But demand is likely to soar.
The boosters follow a promising study that Israel's Health Ministry conducted which found three jabs of the Pfizer vaccine were more efficacious at protecting individuals from the hyper-contagious delta variant than two.
The U.S. is also looking at vaccinations for children under 12. Pfizer director Scott Gottlieb has said the company could file an application for emergency use with the FDA as soon as October. That could mean child vaccinations are available as soon as this winter.
There are 1,050 vaccination sites scattered across the nation's most populous county. L.A. County Department of Public Health said it is ramping up efforts to bring more mobile vaccination clinics to underserved areas of Los Angeles, and doing home visits to home-bound residents.
The department said in a statement Friday that it was working with "vaccine partners to prepare for boosters" and seeking additional providers to help bolster its vaccine delivery infrastructure. The statement added county service providers are awaiting further guidance from the CDC and the state on eligibility and a time frame for the roll out, and said the department has been "assessing capacity."
But the mass testing and vaccine sites erected at the start of the pandemic have long been taken down and it's unclear whether the current sites, along with local hospitals, pharmacies and doctor's offices could fill the gap. Dodger Stadium, once the nation's largest testing site, is open for ball games and the parking lot where 430,000 vaccine shots were administered is now filled with parked cars.Curative, one of the city's partners in testing and vaccinating residents, has closed dozens of vaccine sites as demand shifted further towards needing mobile testing centers. It now operates about 25 testing sites in L.A.
Curative Vice President of Marketing Miranda Gottlieb said the company is gearing up to test more people in the fall by opening more drive-through clinics, but residents are not going to see massive testing infrastructure provided by the likes of Dodger Stadium, which it helped operate.
"Our whole apparatus has sort of waxed and waned along with the pandemic. When vaccines were sort of exponentially being given to people, far fewer people were getting tested," said Lucy Licht, the Southern California partnership manager at Curative.
Rita Burke, a health policy expert at USC, said what we are likely to see in this next wave is a repeat. There will be groups of people lined up to get the booster as soon as it comes out, creating long lines at vaccination sites, and demand will slowly wane.
"It's just hard to have anything permanent of that big of a scale in Los Angeles because space is such a commodity," Burke said. "...any large scale operation like that requires tons and tons of resources in terms of people, in terms of supplies."
Last month, federal officials and the CDC made a third shot available for certain people who are severely immunocompromised, like cancer patients receiving active treatments, those with untreated HIV infections, transplant recipients, and people taking medication that suppress the immune system. These shots are not boosters. They are for people who did not receive enough protection from a second shot and need a third. Boosters replenish the immune system.
There are about 800,000 immunocompromised people in California, a sliver of the state's more than 39 million residents. How effective the rollout for this is could be a harbinger of what's to come.
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Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
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California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.