Lagging COVID vaccine rates bring California surgeon general to Fresno, Kings counties
California’s surgeon general visited Kerman and Corcoran to thank workers at COVID-19 vaccination clinics for their work and to personally administer shots to the arms of residents in a part of the state where vaccination rates are lower than the rest of the state.
At the Kerman Community Center, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris took the opportunity to renew the call by state and county health officials for residents to get their shots as California approaches a June 15 date for fully reopening the state’s economy.
Burke Harris said that statewide, about 60% of the population that is eligible to receive a vaccination – almost everyone age 12 or older – has received at least one shot. “We know it’s several weeks between the first vaccine and second vaccine,” she said. “I think that portends well for June 15 in terms of recognizing that there are many folks who are just within weeks of getting their second vaccine to the point where they are protected.”
In Fresno, however, less than 43% of the total population has received at least one vaccine dose, and fewer than 35% are fully vaccinated. In Kings County, where Burke Harris was to visit the community of Corcoran after her Kerman stop, less than 30% of the population has at least one shot and just 22% are fully vaccinated.
“That’s why I’m here today” in the Valley, Burke Harris said. “We want folks in Fresno County to know how important it is for everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
Not only are vaccinations important to protect people from the virus, “but it’s also important to keeping our society open,” Burke Harris added. “We don’t want to go backwards. The more people who are unvaccinated, the more opportunity the virus has to replicate, and when it replicates, it can mutate.”
“We want to get to the point where this virus has no more opportunity to replicate, and it can’t come back and set us back after we reopen,” she said. “That’s what we want to protect against.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 3:34 PM.
