San Diego County public health officials reported 145 new COVID-19 cases and three more deaths Thursday as they grappled with how to best distribute an increasing supply of vaccine doses.
Out of 14,862 tests reported to the county’s Health and Human Services Agency in the past day, 1.0% were positive and the 14-day rolling average ticked down to 1.4%.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said at the county’s weekly briefing that the number of new cases daily is at levels not seen since “the early, early days of the pandemic.” The challenge now, he said, is getting vaccines to people who need them.
“We are at a place where we have more vaccines available than we have demand for them,” he said.
Fletcher said the county is focused on setting up mobile vaccination sites “to go into the community to try to make it a little easier” for residents to get shots.
“We know it’s going to be a little bit of a grind as we climb from where we are now,” he said, acknowledging that ultimately some San Diegan may refuse to be vaccinated.
More than 1.85 million San Diego County residents have received one dose of vaccine and 1.41 million are fully inoculated against the coronavirus.
Since the pandemic began, there have been 279,489 cases of coronavirus and 3,749 deaths from the pandemic disease in San Diego County.
Updated at 9:20 p.m., Thursday, May 20, 2021
