Most of Los Angeles County’s supply of COVID-19 vaccine will be needed for second doses into next week, as even stepped-up shipments will be insufficient to break the bottleneck of people needing to complete their inoculation regimen, officials said.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday that about 55% of the doses expected this week will be needed for second shots — which are required a few weeks after people initially roll up their sleeves.

County officials have already said they will be limited to administering second doses for the rest of the week starting Tuesday at a handful of their major vaccination sites: the Fairplex in Pomona, the Forum in Inglewood, county Office of Education in Downey, Cal State Northridge, El Sereno, Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia and Balboa Sports Complex in Encino.

While the county is committed to providing second doses as close to the recommend interval as possible — three weeks for Pfizer-BioNTech and four weeks for Moderna — Ferrer acknowledged that “it is hard to manage a vaccination program with so much variability in the weekly allocations.”

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