Author: Phyllis Agran, MD, MPH, FAAP

It’s been more than a year since the first COVID-19 case was reported in Orange County.  As of March 31st, we have now had 250,683 reported cases and 4,744 Orange County residents have lost their lives to the virus.
 

Here in Irvine, there have been 10,379 reported cases and 81 of our Irvine neighbors have died from COVID-19. Each of those numbers represents someone’s mother, father, daughter, son, friend, neighbor, or co-worker. Thousands of lives have been devastated by the loss of our 81 Irvine neighbors.

Mass-vaccination is our best available tool to get to the other side of this public health crisis.

The COVID-19 statistics in January were devastating here in Orange County.  In addition to 75,208 new cases, January was the deadliest month on record since the pandemic began; 1,187 lives were lost across the County in just 31 days. 

While other cities are busy setting up mass-vaccination sites, Irvine still has no plans in place. Now, it appears the City has allowed developer FivePoint to nix the use of our Great Park altogether.

After the previous Council missed their opportunity to get COVID-19 under control here in Irvine, I had hoped that our City’s new Mayor and Council would demonstrate bold leadership. So far, that has not been the case.

The human costs of COVID-19 continue to grow at a horrific rate.  In fact, January was the deadliest month on record since the pandemic began. We are in the midst of a public health crisis! We must do everything in our power to save lives.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has not been rolling, even for our critical health care workers who were supposed to have been vaccinated by this point.

What we need right now are elected leaders who we can count on to take swift action to immediately establish a robust vaccination program.