COVID booster shots now have a green light. Who’s eligible now in Fresno, Valley?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and a scientific review panel for California and other western states have given their blessing to booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines for all three of the vaccine products currently being used in the U.S.
The two agencies’ statements late last week recommend booster doses for senior citizens and some other population segments who are already fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. That now clears the way for medical providers, clinics and participating pharmacies to begin offering the doses to eligible residents in Fresno County and nearby Valley counties, as well as statewide.
As booster doses become available, however, the percentages of the Valley’s population that has yet to receive any COVID-19 vaccine at all remains stubbornly below the statewide average heading into the winter holiday season.
The Kings County Department of Public Health announced on Monday that it is now making the booster doses of all three vaccines – PfizerBioNTech, Moderna and Janssen/Johnson & Johnson – available to residents. For the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, that means people who completed both shots of the original two-dose regimen at least six months ago can get the shots if they meet the qualifying criteria:
- Age 65 or older.
- Age 18 or older who live in long-term care settings
- Age 18 or older with underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19, including cancer; chronic kidney, liver or lung disease; dementia; diabetes; Down syndrome; heart conditions; HIV; compromised immune system; obesity or being overweight; pregnancy; sickle cell disease; being a current or former smoker; organ transplant recipient; stroke; or tuberculosis.
- Age 18 or older who work in high-risk settings for exposure to the virus, including emergency responders such as healthcare workers, police, firefighters, or nursing home staff; education staff including teachers, support workers or daycare workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; postal workers; public transit workers; and grocery store workers.
The same criteria apply to people who received the one-dose Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months ago.
In Fresno County, interim assistant health department director Joe Prado said he does not anticipate shortages of any vaccine products because of increased demand for booster shots. While the boosters are being made available, a more pressing concern remains that the county remains well behind where it wanted to be in terms of the percentage of residents vaccinated by this time.
Lagging vaccination rate
On Sunday, Fresno County finally crossed a threshold of having half of its overall population being fully vaccinated – 516,251 people, out of a populace of 1,032,227 – according to data from the California Department of Public Health. It’s taken almost 11 months to reach that point. Earlier this year, Prado and other local health officials had expressed hope that at least 65% of the population would have their shots by the end of the summer.
Almost 451,000 people in Fresno County, however, have yet to receive even one vaccine dose – including an estimated 190,000 children under the age of 12 for whom vaccines have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
Among the approximately 842,000 vaccine-eligible residents, just over 60% are now fully vaccinated with either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna shots or one shot of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson product. Prado said the Fresno County Department of Public Health has set an ambitious goal of boosting that figure up to 75% by December.
When the vaccination rate reached 75% among the county’s senior citizens, “we saw a reduction in that population presenting in emergency rooms, so we really want to hit that goal” countywide.
“With the holidays coming up, there’s going to be a lot of indoor gatherings going on,” Prado said. “If we look at December and January of last year, that’s when Fresno County peaked with the most amount of cases, and then in January and February after that surge we experienced the most deaths.”
During that surge in cases, vaccines were not widely available to the general population, he added. Conversely, last winter health officials were not having to deal with several newer factors: the highly contagious delta variant of coronavirus that has driven case counts over the past few months; the return of students to classrooms in schools and colleges; and a widely reopened economy.
The expected approval of vaccines for ages 5 to 11 in the coming weeks will expand eligibility, providing a potential stepping stone toward the 75% goal. Still, Prado said, “it is statistically significant to reach that within a two-month period.”
“Yes, we are setting our goal outside the statistical boundaries, but I think that’s what we need,” he said. “We’re going to need that level of protection going into these holidays with the delta variant in our community. … We don’t want to experience the amount of death that we did this past year.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2021 at 2:36 PM.
