Fresno County expects its biggest shipment of COVID-19 vaccine coming next week
About 43,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are destined to arrive in Fresno County next week, including 10,000 of the latest vaccine to become available under federal emergency-use authorization.
Joe Prado, community health division manager for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said it will be the largest allocation for the county from the state of California since the first vaccines were shipped in mid-December.
Fresno County has received about 208,000 individual vaccine doses to date. Nearly all of those have been products manufactured by either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, both of which require a two-shot regiment to provide the greatest protection against the coronavirus. But Prado said the county did receive a limited amount this week of the new single-dose vaccine manufactured by Janssen/Johnson & Johnson.
“This is a long-awaited, one-time-dose vaccine that we’re really excited about having available,” Prado said Friday in a media briefing with reporters.
Prado said the single-dose vaccine will be focused on providing shots for residents who are less likely to be able to get both shots of the other two products, including mobile clinics in rural areas of the county and for the homeless population. But after next week, he added, the county does not expect to receive any additional Johnson & Johnson vaccine until the week of March 23.
Prado and Dr. Rais Vohra, the county’s interim health officer, both described Fresno County’s vaccine efforts to date as a cause for celebration. In mid-February, Prado said, Fresno County was at about 100,000 shots given. Over the past three weeks, that’s nearly doubled, to almost 200,000 as of Thursday. “That’s a significant accomplishment for Fresno County,” Prado said.
Easing restrictions
California health officials announced Friday that they are easing up on some restrictions on business and amusement operations under the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy.
The state Department of Public Health will begin allowing major outdoor sporting events and concerts with an audience, as well as amusement parks to operate with limitations starting April 1.
For counties in the the most restrictive tier of the state’s color-coded blueprint, purple Tier 1 – covering 40 California counties including Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare – outdoor musical entertainment and theme parks of any size can have 100 or fewer guests in attendance. Those counties that are home to Major League Baseball teams can also allow up to 100 fans for those games.
Counties in the less-restrictive red Tier 2 can allow sports and entertainment to open with a 20% capacity, assuming they also maintain the typical guidelines for masks and social distancing.
Amusement parks in red-tier counties will be capped at 15% of capacity with further restrictions on indoor rides to keep those waiting in line outside as much as possible. Visitors must also register ahead of time, and the park is restricted to only allow visitors from within the state.
In the least-restrictive tiers, orange Tier 3 and yellow Tier 4, counties can let parks and events operate with larger percentages of the entire capacity, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency.
“We will keep our foot on the brake, not the gas, our eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and navigate based on data and science,” Ghaly said Friday.
Coronavirus case updates
Vohra, the Fresno County Department of Public Health doctor, reported Friday that there were 130 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed through testing since the previous update Thursday afternoon. Since the first local case of coronavirus was identified a year ago, more than 96,000 Fresno County residents have at some point contracted the virus.
Vohra also acknowledged 22 additional deaths since Thursday’s report. The cumulative number of lives lost to COVID-19, as noted on officials death certificates, stands at 1,488 to date.
In neighboring Valley counties, Friday’s updates included:
Kings County: 31 new cases, 22,150 to date; no additional deaths, 227 to date. State prisons in Avenal and Corcoran have experienced more than 7,200 of those cases and 17 of the fatalities.
Madera County: 32 new cases, 15,540 to date; no additional deaths, 214 to date.
Mariposa County: No new cases, 395 to date; no additional deaths, seven to date.
Merced County: 51 new cases, 29,378 to date; one additional death, 413 to date.
Tulare County: 40 additional cases, 48,203 to date; two additional deaths, 770 to date.
Valleywide, almost 212,000 residents have been infected with COVID-19 over the past year, including 3,119 who have died.
Fresno Bee reporter Thaddeus Miller contributed to this report.
