More COVID vaccine doses coming to Fresno County. Who’s next to get shots?
A growing number of places in Fresno County are receiving coveted allocations of coronavirus vaccines — just a few weeks after the county was forced to put its vaccination clinics on hold temporarily because of a shortage of doses provided by the state.
Joe Prado, community health manager for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said Friday 18,000 vaccine doses have been allocated to the county by state health leaders for next week. That comes on the heels of 19,000 doses delivered this week to protect residents against COVID-19.
“This is a good second week of having increased allocations,” Prado said. “We are reaching out to our partners and seeing who’s ready for vaccine, to take some more of the doses.”
He added that clinics and providers who receive vaccine must be able to use it for shots for patients within seven days after receiving the medicine.
The latest allocations from the state are more than double the 8,000 doses that Fresno County had received in prior weeks. But they remain below the 30,000 doses that county health officials say they are capable of administering each week through large-scale clinic sites, mobile clinics and an increasing number of health clinics and doctors’ offices across the county.
Since mid-December, Prado said the county has received 132,000 doses of the two vaccines that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use – one produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, the other by Moderna, both of which require two separate shots for full protection.
In about eight weeks since the first shipment of vaccine arrived in Fresno County in December, just over 100,000 doses have been given to patients, Prado added. About 80% of those are estimated to have been first doses for individuals, with the remaining 20% used to finish the two-shot regimen.
Nearly three dozen medical clinics and practices are now offering shots to people ages 65 and older and healthcare workers, in addition to the county’s own mass-vaccination site at the Fresno Fairgrounds in southeast Fresno. Because supplies of vaccine remain scarce in California and nationwide, people under the age of 65 or who are not healthcare workers are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine under priorities established by the state.
Prado said about 28,000 people age 65 and older had used the county’s website to fill out a form to express interest in getting vaccinated.
But “that’s not all the people in the age group who want the vaccine, just those who filled out the form,” he said. “We know there are many more out there.” He estimated there are about 95,000 people at least age 65 who are eligible for the vaccine, although some of those may not be interested in receiving the shots.
Who’s next in line?
The next eligibility tier, once many of the senior citizens have been vaccinated, will include workers in education and childcare, food and agriculture, and emergency services.
But the availability of shots for those workers will depend on the number of vaccine doses allocated to Fresno County and how quickly the vaccines can be provided to the older residents. Last week, Prado said that might not be until late March or early April.
If the county continues to receive increased allocations as it has this week and next, that could be accelerated to earlier in March.
Still, demand for vaccinations has been so high that available reservation slots at county-run clinics often fill up immediately, forcing people to wait to schedule their first doses. Many health clinics and medical officers, however, are reaching out to their older patients directly to schedule appointments for shots, county health leaders said.
People with certain high-risk medical conditions are also being moved up in the state’s priority structure. Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said Friday that health providers will have the discretion starting on March 15 – depending on the availability of vaccine doses – to offer shots to patients ages 16 to 64 who are “deemed to be at the very highest risk for morbidity and mortality from COVID-19.”
A state health bulletin to medical providers states that those include cancer patients with compromised immune systems; people with serious chronic kidney disease; chronic pulmonary patients who depend on oxygen; people with Down syndrome; organ transplant recipients with compromised immune systems; women who are pregnant; sickle cell patients; people with heart disease; the severely obese; or people with Type 2 diabetes.
Mobile clinics and national pharmacy chains
The county’s updated list of vaccination sites notes clinics and medical offices in Fresno, Clovis, Coalinga, Fowler, Huron, Kerman, Mendota, Orange Cove, Parlier, Reedley, Sanger and Selma.
The list, however, does not include mobile clinics that the county is mobilizing in collaboration with community outreach organizations in towns in rural Fresno County.
This week, clinics were offered to eligible senior citizens in Orange Cove in eastern Fresno County and in the Lanare-Riverdale area in the southern part of the county.
Nor does it yet include an outreach vaccine clinic that is expected to start late next week at Gaston Middle School in southwest Fresno, and a current state-established OptumServe coronavirus testing site at Reedley College that will soon begin to provide vaccinations.
In addition, national pharmacy chains CVS and Rite Aid are starting to offer limited numbers of vaccines at some of their retail stores in California.
CVS, on its website, said it is receiving an initial allocation of about 82,000 that will be distributed among about 100 stores in California, including central San Joaquin Valley locations in Atwater, Fresno, Hanford, Madera, Porterville and Tulare.
Rite Aid is not releasing a list of participating stores, but in a statement indicated that it expects to initially receive about 100 doses each week at each of its selected stores, with the number of stores and doses growing as vaccine supplies expand nationwide.
Both Rite Aid and CVS are receiving their allocations directly from the federal government, so those doses will be in addition to what the county receives from the state.
“We’re slowly seeing this increased capacity now at the national pharmacy level, which is a huge plus to have them here in Fresno County,” Prado said.
For appointments for vaccinations from CVS, people need to register online on the company’s website: www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine, or by calling 800-746-7287.
A Rite Aid spokesman said appointments at its participating stores need to be made through local health department websites.
In Fresno County, that’s now through the state’s My Turn registration and eligibility system. People can reach a link to that system through the county’s website at co.fresno.ca.us/departments/public-health/covid-19/covid-19-vaccines. People who don’t have computer or online access can call My Turn at 833-422-4255.
County health officials continue to await word on approval by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a larger mass-vaccination site in the San Joaquin Valley. The Save Mart Center, on the Fresno State campus in northeast Fresno, has been pitched as a possible site that Prado said is desirable because of its easy freeway access from Highway 168 as well as its acres of parking.
Similar FEMA vaccination sites in California have been set up at the Oakland Coliseum in the Bay Area and at California State University - Los Angeles in southern California. Both are operated jointly by FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services.
This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 2:31 PM.
