Fresno to President Biden and Kamala Harris: We need more COVID vaccine doses, help us
Fresno leaders are bypassing Gov. Gavin Newsom and taking their case straight to President Joe Biden to lobby for a greater allocation of scarce COVID-19 vaccine doses to Fresno County as new cases continue to add up across the city and the county.
The Fresno City Council unanimously passed a non-binding resolution Thursday to ask the nation’s leaders to step in and improve the vaccine outlook for Fresno County.
Sponsored by Councilmember Mike Karbassi, the resolution asks President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Xavier Beccera, Biden’s nominee for secretary of Health & Human Services, to intercede and drive up the portion of shots sent to Fresno County by the state Department of Public Health.
Harris represented California in the U.S. Senate before becoming vice president last month. Beccera is also from California, serving as the state’s attorney general before his Cabinet nomination.
“We’re just not getting our fair share from the state,” Karbassi said. “We have about half the vaccination rate of the state. That’s really unacceptable.”
Since the first local case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Fresno County 11 months ago, more than 51,600 people in Fresno have tested positive for the virus as of Tuesday, and the countywide case count is poised to surpass 90,000 within the next day or two.
The council’s vote comes a day after officials with the Fresno County Department of Public Health said they only expect to receive about 8,000 doses of vaccine per week for the foreseeable future – a volume that falls far short of initial plans to give 30,000 shots a week.
The shortfall threatens to delay for months the ability of the county to reach its goal of vaccinating 600,000 people by August to provide widespread protection against COVID-19.
The delays are worrisome to health officials because of new variations of the virus that may be more contagious than the original strain.
As the virus mutates when it gets passed along from person to person, there are concerns that the two vaccines that have received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may be less effective against newer strains.
New cases in Fresno County
The California Department of Public Health reported Thursday that Fresno County had an increase of 206 new confirmed coronavirus infections since Wednesday’s update. Over the past seven days, the county has averaged about 409 new cases each day.
Fresno County health officials also acknowledged 26 additional deaths on Thursday. Since Monday, the start of February, 87 deaths have been confirmed. That comes on the heels of more than 425 deaths reported in January for which death certificates attributed the cause of death to COVID-19.
To date, the number of people in Fresno County who have tested positive at some point for coronavirus is 89,748, whether they experienced symptoms or not. Of those, 1,224 have died.
Thursday’s Fresno City Council resolution notes that the rate of COVID-19 vaccinations per capita in Fresno County is less than half the statewide rate. The lack of vaccine doses being allocated to the county compounds other factors that put the region at higher risk for disruption by the disease, according to the resolution, including:
- A poverty rate of more than 20%, double the state and federal average.
- A high percentage of residents, including senior citizens, with other conditions including heart and lung disease, diabetes and obesity that put them at greater risk for serious complications from COVID-19.
- The threat posed by coronavirus to workers in the agriculture and food industries, public safety and others in Fresno County.
Around the Valley
Coronavirus case updates from neighboring counties in the central San Joaquin Valley on Thursday include:
Kings County: 87 new cases, 20,981 to date; 12 additional deaths, 189 to date. Nearly 7,200 of the confirmed cases, and 17 deaths, have been among inmates at state prisons in Avenal and Corcoran.
Madera County: 78 new cases, 14,587 to date; no additional deaths, 184 to date.
Mariposa County: One new case, 374 to date; no additional deaths, five to date.
Merced County: 104 new cases, 27,018 to date; no additional deaths, 359 to date.
Tulare County: 106 new cases, 45,647 to date; 13 additional deaths, 623 to date.
This story was originally published February 4, 2021 at 3:01 PM.
