Orange County had gaps in planning for pandemic, OC grand jury says

Although it has long had emergency plans in case of a pandemic, Orange County was not ready for COVID-19 and was slow to react in a number of ways that hampered its public heath response, the OC grand jury said in a report made public Wednesday, May 12.

The report criticized how the county responded to the pandemic on several fronts, including not having enough resources in place to carry out some of its existing plans.

County spokeswoman Molly Nichelson said the OC Health Care Agency and county leaders are aware of the report and will respond within the time frame laid out under the rules.

Orange County Supervisors Board Chairman Andrew Do said while an official answer will come later from the full board, he personally is proud of the county’s response to the pandemic, though he acknowledged some aspects could be improved.

In Orange County, grand jurors are volunteers who handle oversight of public agencies; they also consider indictments sought by prosecutors against suspects in major criminal investigations.

The grand jury reviewed various county emergency plans and state and national standards for such plans, as well as county budgets, stockpiles of masks and other protective equipment and contracts with community partners for COVID-19 outreach and services.

In the report, the grand jury made nine findings and six recommendations. Among key issues were:

• Some emergency plans were incomplete or not up to date when the pandemic struck, in some cases because planning efforts had been underfunded over time or the OC Health Care Agency’s financial and staff resources had been redirected to other parts of its mission.
• The county was slow to establish partnerships in the community to better serve some harder-to-reach or under-served populations, and creation of a vaccination task force and vaccine distribution plan could have happened earlier than it did, in September 2020.
• Although up to 45% of Orange County residents aren’t  proficient in English, until recently the county fell short at putting out information in other languages, and it didn’t provide enough resources in general to communicate effectively with the media or the community.

 

Recommendations included reviewing and updating preparedness plans within the next year; creating a committee within three months that would get a wider spectrum of the community involved in pandemic planning; and setting up a process to ensure vital information gets translated into key languages and that media resources are adequate.

“Although the Orange County Board of Supervisors declared a ‘pandemic’ in March 2020, the OCHCA has been unable to effectively implement and execute plans to respond to the current pandemic,” the report said, adding that if the problems aren’t addressed, “future pandemics will pose significant challenges for the residents of Orange County.”

The county has 90 days to respond to the report.

Do said the county was among the first public health agencies to reach out specifically to Latino communities when COVID-19 hot spots began to appear, and it also launched an initiative to reach Asian American and Pacific Islander residents fairly early on.

 While non-English options weren’t available when the vaccination app Othena rolled out, Supervisor Don Wagner said, “We were in the community” directly helping people get information and sign up for appointments.

 Wagner said it “could be a very fair complaint” that it was sometimes hard for media to get information and interviews with health agency officials in the initial months of the pandemic.

Some of the local deficiencies stemmed from the confusion, chaos and lack of resources that were seen far beyond Orange County, Do said.

News reports have pointed to shrinking funding and disappearing jobs in the public health field across the country, with an August 2020 article from the Associated Press and Kaiser Health News saying the system has been “starved for decades and lacks the resources to confront the worst health crisis in a century.

As of Wednesday, 5,023 Orange County residents have died from COVID-19 and more than 250,000 cases have been recorded among the county’s 3.2 million residents. Fewer than 100 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, but a spike in severe cases in late December and early January stretched OC hospitals so thin several set up outdoor field tents to hold extra beds.

Vaccination efforts struggled earlier this year because of lack of supply and logistical issues, but as of Sunday nearly 1.3 million residents were fully vaccinated and another 445,000 had gotten a first dose. As of Wednesday, state officials reported Orange County has surpassed having 50% of its residents at least partially vaccinated, and it reached that milestone head of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Were our efforts flawless? Clearly, clearly no,” Wagner said. “We’lI use this (grand jury report), I suspect, as a vehicle to hone our performance for the next crisis.”

Orange County Register
By Alicia Robinson
May 12, 2021