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Reflections on the city’s COVID-19 response

It’s important to be introspective because it allows you to grow and learn from your mistakes or to lean even more into your strengths. So, when the city released an After-Action Report & Improvement Plan about the COVID-19 pandemic, I had to read it (because I know you likely won’t). 

Those of you reading this newsletter lived through those chaotic three years where, depending on the month, eggs and toilet paper battled COVID-19 tests and surgical masks as the hardest-to-find commodity in the city. 

It was a trying time that none of us were equipped to deal with. And in some cases, neither was the city. 

The report, which is abbreviated as (AAR/IP), if you choose to read it, sheds light on the Long Beach Health and Human Services Department’s response to the pandemic and explains some of the snags you may have noticed along the way.

But good luck keeping up with all the acronyms.

The report says Long Beach moved fast to mobilize its Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which is not to be confused with the health department’s Department Operations Center (DOC) or the All Hazards Incident Management Team (AHIMT). 

Questions from the media were routed through the Joint Information Center (JIC), which at times was a Big Black Hole (BBH) for information. 

Through May 2022, the report notes that the city administered more than one million tests and 334,000 vaccine doses, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In understated fashion, the report said the city was able to do things like provide safe working spaces for volunteers and employees and relay the most current public health data to city stakeholders “with some challenges.” 

Major challenges were encountered when the city tried to maintain “robust epidemiologic surveillance” to make data-driven decisions and secure adequate staffing to support the public health response.  

To be fair, the health department’s budget heading into the pandemic was approved for about 427 full-time equivalent positions or about 7.5% of the city’s workforce. However, because the department is overwhelmingly dependent on grants and other outside funding, it was budgeted for just $3.4 million of the city’s $555.7 million general fund in 2020, according to city budget documents. 

So, staffing seemed like it would be an issue heading into a massive response like that, and it was, according to the report. 

The public-facing COVID-19 data dashboard that the city eventually created did not have enough people trained to update it, so when those employees were not around, it created a bottleneck of data. 

When the city bought new lab testing equipment to meet the demand of people trying to figure out if they were sick, it went unused because of the lack of personnel trained to use it, according to the report. 

The report said that there were also internal struggles to share information across departments, and the city’s slow hiring process made it harder to bring on temporary workers. 

Then, of course, there were the types of problems that many of us ran into, like who to classify as a “frontline worker,” how to keep working efficiently from home, and deciding who got to work from home and who had to keep going into the office. 

The report noted city employees take an oath when they’re hired to serve as disaster workers if needed, but when the pandemic hit some, were unwilling, and others who were reassigned to different jobs lacked adequate training. 

Some employees were put in positions they weren’t suited for just because they were managers, and some employees interviewed for the report said that “work in the EOC at times felt political, which hindered successful operations.” 

The short-staffed working conditions led to burnout. The mental health of city employees was affected, and salaried employees were not being compensated for long hours, the report said.

There were also issues outside of the city’s control. Do you remember how hard it was to get a vaccine appointment when they became widely available to the public? The report explains how third-party vendors overseeing the state’s “MYTurn” vaccine system led to “MyTurn Mayhem Monday.”

That happened when, Accenture, which was overseeing the system, accidentally released 3,200 appointments at the Convention Center mass vaccination site instead of the few hundred it was supposed to. This led to traffic being snarled Downtown and people with legitimate appointments being turned away. 

The report ends with seven pages that include dozens of corrective actions to avoid these kinds of missteps in the future. 

I think I can speak for all of us when I say the work done behind the scenes to keep the city running during the pandemic is commendable, but let’s hope that the city has some time before its ability to respond to a major crisis is tested again. 

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS WEEK:

Another attempt to block a permanent parklet on Second Street in Belmont Shore was denied Thursday night when the Planning Commission voted to allow the project to move forward. This application was for the popular Open Sesame restaurant, which will join Legends Restaurant and Sports Bar as a location with a permanent installation, assuming the City Council upholds that project. A small group of residents have been pushing back on these projects in the Shore, but it appears for now that so long as they meet city specifications, they could continue to be approved. The only similar project that is facing uncertainty is Belmont Brewing Company’s outdoor dining area, which is subject to California Coastal Commission approval. That project was pushed to next month’s meeting after commissioners raised concerns about the space last week.

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT WEEK:

This week provided another great example of not believing everything you see on the internet (especially the site formerly known as Twitter). A fatal crash in Downtown and early information put out by the Long Beach Police Department, led to wild speculation that the crash was a terrorist attack. My colleague, Laura Anaya-Morga did a good job of laying out how that happened and why. I chose to highlight this because we all live in such a fast-paced news environment that it’s important sometimes to take a step back and remember that the story is always evolving. We as reporters do our best to get you the information that we can find out. But I can’t say the same for random “blue checkmark” accounts or people screaming into the abyss of Nextdoor.