L.A. County gives COVID shots at home. Advocates fear ‘people just don’t know about this’
LA CRUCES, N.Y. — Nearly 50 years removed from the advent of the AIDS virus, California is giving COVID-19 vaccine shots at home.
Many California health care providers are testing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 at home and on demand for patients who could test negative for the virus in a study launched this week at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It’s a little bit of a novel concept, and I think we all have doubts about it,” said Dr. Richard Naylor, a board member of the California Immunization Coalition, a nonprofit that’s organizing the program.
“How will this affect public health? Will people who don’t have the virus be tested?” asked Naylor, whose organization will administer the program, which begins on Friday. “We aren’t quite sure.”
The program, which will provide free, home-administered vaccines to anyone who tests negative, is an effort to “bring the world back to a world where everyone receives vaccines,” said Naylor, who worked on the effort with health care providers.
Naylor, an infectious disease specialist who began consulting with a physician who lives in Los Angeles about 10 years ago, said the effort is “one of the first things I think about when I think of California.”
“I think it’s amazing,” he said. “I really want to know that everyone who may not be immunized is vaccinated.”
Naylor said that, during the flu season, immunizations are offered to “all adults in California through the [California Immunization Coalition] program.” The program, which has distributed more than 400,000 vaccines and tested more than 30,000, offers a wide range of vaccines at low cost to anyone who tests negative.
“What that means is everyone can get a flu shot. Most importantly, we’ve been able to stop getting flu shots,�
