Event offers free tacos to help boost COVID-19 vaccination rates among Fresno Latinos
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
The first few weeks of January were unbearable for María de Jesús Vargas and her family.
The 32-year-old farmworker and mother of two would wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of her daughter, Jennifer, screaming. For nights on end, her 13-year-old didn’t sleep as she writhed in pain, complaining of body aches, chills and a fever.
“The first few days were the worst,” she said in Spanish. “She would cry all night, saying that everything hurt and that she felt like her bones were breaking. She lost her sense of smell, couldn’t eat and had terrible headaches. All of us suffered with her.”
Though they recovered, Vargas said she doesn’t want other families to see their children in pain like she did. Her 13-year-old will be getting vaccinated this week during a special event tailored for the Latino community, and she’s urging other families in her rural community of Reedley to get the shot, too.
Across the Central Valley, Latinos represent a majority of the population and the bulk of COVID-19 cases, but have lagged behind other residents when it comes to getting vaccinated. In Fresno County, Latino residents remain the largest group that has yet to be vaccinated, despite representing 56% of all COVID-19 cases countywide. Fewer than a quarter of eligible Latino residents in Fresno County are fully vaccinated.
In response, Latino advocacy groups in the region are pivoting their strategies to include more cultural and family-friendly activities at vaccination events.
“What we know about the Latino population is that there are still hurdles for them to overcome,” said Genoveva Islas, founder of the Fresno-based advocacy group Cultiva la Salud.
“What we know to be true is that when we can remove barriers, when we can create these walk-up opportunities and mobile clinics, then we have a better chance of responding to the needs of that population,” she said. “It’s the right time to do more welcoming, ethnic-centered events, because we’re trying to dig deeper into a population that is hard to reach.”
Selma event includes vaccinations, free tacos
Cultiva la Salud, in partnership with the Fresno County Department of Public Health, is hosting a mass vaccination event on Friday at the Selma Senior Center, located at 2301 Selma St., beginning at 3 p.m. The event, which they’re calling a tardeada, will include free tacos, as well as mariachi music, a raffle and folkloric dancing.
It’s one of many community vaccination efforts that leaders are promoting throughout the Valley.
Centro Binacional Para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Indigenous communities in California, held an all-day event in Fresno this past Saturday. It featured COVID-19 vaccinations and tests, as well as other resources for the Latino community. The organization helped answer immigration-related questions and distributed information on how to apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“We’re working really hard to educate, with a particular focus on being a resource to the Indigenous community,” Oralia Maceda, a community advocate with Centro Binacional, said in Spanish.
Maceda said organization representatives are also knocking on people’s doors and going directly to worksites to discuss vaccination. They are also setting up information booths in front of grocery stores, gas stations and shops in rural areas where farmworkers regularly run errands.
Events aim to break down barriers to vaccination
These community-based efforts come as the vaccination gap remains wide.
Though COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming increasingly more available and expanding to younger age groups, many community advocates say Latino children and their families living in the Central Valley’s rural areas still face barriers to getting vaccinated. And since Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was approved for those ages 12 and up, some advocates worry families with eligible children will only continue to fall behind.
Recent state data shows that of about 445,000 Latinos ages 12 and older, nearly 275,000 — or about 62% — have not been vaccinated.
Latino families face several barriers to getting vaccinated, Islas of Cultiva la Salud said. Many, she said, can’t get to a vaccine clinic if they work long hours or live in a rural area. Some remain confused about their eligibility status and have doubts or questions about the vaccine. Others, including undocumented people and those in mixed-status families, don’t want to make an appointment online, fearing they could be deported if they fill out a form that asks for personal information, she added.
That’s why more needs to be done to make the shots accessible, Islas said.
But as Vargas has learned, convincing community members to get vaccinated isn’t easy. She said many have expressed hesitation or said they can’t because of work, while others, she added, still don’t take COVID-19 seriously.
“It’s infuriating,” Vargas said. “They don’t want to get vaccinated and they may not realize that COVID-19 affects everyone differently and for some, it is a lot worse than others. We should be thinking about everyone — not just ourselves, but all the people around us.”
Vargas lives in a small, two-bedroom apartment with her husband, two kids and elderly father. They all work in the fields, she said, and were all infected with the virus at the same time. So when she heard the news that the COVID-19 vaccine would be available to children 12 and older, Vargas didn’t hesitate to get her daughter vaccinated.
With the vaccine, she said, “nothing could make me feel safer.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.