Vaccine eligibility expanding in Fresno County. Here’s who can get COVID shots next week
Fresno County will see an expansion in the number of people eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine next week, as clinics open up to begin providing shots to workers in education and the food/agriculture industries.
In particular, vaccines for the food and agriculture workers will involve more than people who work in food processing plants or workers in farm fields or orchards, said Joe Prado, community health division manager for the Fresno County Department of Public Health.
Increased allotments of vaccine in recent weeks – including about 21,000 this week for Fresno County – are expected to help the region catch up after shortages throughout the Valley.
“Food and ag includes our restaurant workers (and) our grocery workers as well,” Prado said Tuesday. “You’ve been hearing a lot about food and agriculture as farm (and packing house) workers” after a recent initiative to deliver 3,000 vaccine doses to field workers and workers in food processing plants.
“We want to make sure everyone understands that it’s a lot more expansive,” Prado noted, adding that the sector would also include “big-box” stores such as Walmart, Target and other retailers whose inventory includes groceries in addition to general merchandise – effectively people in the food service and grocery businesses who are considered essential to keeping the food supply chain up and running.
For Fresno County clinics, residents can check their eligibility online at myturn.ca.gov. Eligibility varies from county to county depending on how much vaccine has been allocated. The latest guidelines issued by the state on eligibility are online at www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/VaccineAllocationGuidelines.aspx.
In the education sector, much of the focus on vaccines has been for teachers and school staff working in elementary and high schools.
But state guidelines indicate that the eligibility also includes child care and daycare providers, staff and faculty in colleges, universities and technical/trade schools, and related support staff such as school bus drivers, crossing guards and others who come into contact with students.
Prado said that Fresno County is emphasizing workers in kindergarten through 12th grades based on prioritization of risk, and then expanding the availability of vaccines to others in the education industry.
“We’re going to be able to go through and vaccinate the high-risk (people) really fairly quickly here …,” Prado said, “but we are going to be very targeted with our K-12 system.”
Other areas of the region
Neighboring Tulare and Madera counties have already opened vaccine eligibility for teachers and other school workers in elementary, middle and high schools.
Fresno County and other Valley counties have lagged behind other parts of the state in allocations of vaccines and doses administered to date.
As of Tuesday, data from the state Department of Public Health indicated that just under 285,000 doses of vaccine had been administered in the six-county Valley region including Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties.
And while the region represents about 5.3% of California’s overall population, the vaccine delivery amounts to less than 3.8% of doses given statewide to date.
Coronavirus case updates
The number of Fresno County residents who have died from COVID-19 has pushed beyond 1,400, according to an update Tuesday by the county’s interim health officer, Dr. Rais Vohra. The death toll is based on causes of death listed on official death certificates of residents.
Four additional deaths were reported Tuesday, pushing the number of lives lost to the coronavirus to 1,401 since the first local cases of COVID-19 were confirmed almost a year ago.
Officials with the Fresno County Department of Public Health reported 210 new COVID-19 cases among people who were tested for the virus. That pushes the total number of residents who have been infected with the coronavirus over the past 11 months to 94,584.
Among neighboring Valley counties, Tuesday’s updates included:
Kings County: 35 new cases, 21,916 to date; two additional deaths, 218 to date.
Madera County: 33 new cases, 15,279 to date; no additional deaths, 201 to date. Madera County has not reported any deaths from COVID-19 since Feb. 16.
Mariposa County: No new cases, 393 to date; no additional deaths, 7 to date.
Merced County: 94 new cases, 28,749 to date; two additional deaths, 393 to date.
Tulare County: 118 new cases, 47,680 to date; nine additional deaths, 731 to date.
Across the six-county region, the number of people who have had COVID-19 since March 2020, whether they experienced symptoms or not, has grown to 208,601. Of those, 2,951 have died from the disease.
