Fresno County expects to start giving COVID booster shots next week. Are you eligible?
Fresno County health officials are preparing to distribute Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots for certain segments of the population now that the Food and Drug Administration signed off on them.
The FDA authorized booster doses for Americans who are 65 and older, younger adults with underlying health conditions and those in jobs that put them at high risk for COVID-19.
For the booster shots, Fresno County Department of Public Health is working with the same health care providers it had for the initial vaccine rollout, according to Joe Prado, the interim assistant director of the department.
“We’re anticipating next week boosters to go live in our community,” he said. “Next week we’re really going to be watching to see the impact to the system overall.”
Prado said the health department has ordered extra Pfizer vaccines in anticipation.
The state still has to approve the boosters before the county can administer them, but officials are expecting that approval during the weekend, Prado said. The initial vaccine went through a similar process.
The FDA’s ruling on boosters represents a drastically scaled-back version of the Biden administration’s sweeping plan to give third doses to nearly all American adults to shore up their protection amid the spread of the highly-contagious delta variant.
U.S. regulators will decide at a later date on boosters for people who have received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Fresno County interim Health Officer Rais Vohra said Friday that the ruling could be in two or three weeks.
Vohra said “leftover doses” of Moderna or Johnson & Johnson may be available for people who fit the high-risk factors and those shots could be administered, but that will happen on a case-by-case basis. The county is not setting up clinics for those boosters until they get official approval from the state.
“We’ve always had sort of a pipeline for using leftover doses because we don’t want to waste doses,” he said. “That’s been our mantra from day one to never throw away a dose that could go into a patient that could benefit them.”
Regulators indicated the Pfizer shots would not be recommended for people who got a different brand of vaccine initially.
Vaccinations for children
The state is also looking at expanding vaccine option programs for children as well, officials said.
The shots have not been made available yet by the state, but Pfizer said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine works for children ages 5 to 11 and that it will seek U.S. authorization for that age group soon.
The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech already is available for anyone 12 and older. But with kids now back in school and the extra-contagious delta variant causing a huge jump in pediatric infections, many parents are anxiously awaiting vaccinations for their younger children.
Hospitals
San Joaquin Valley hospitals continue to be crowded with 10% or less available capacity for at least the past two weeks, officials said.
“I worked in the emergency department in the middle of this week, and it was a non-stop flow of patients coming in,” Vohra said of Community Regional Medical Center.
Officials said the unvaccinated make up a large number of people who end up in a hospital bed, saying they continue to fight misinformation that makes people hesitant to get the shot that is proven to work.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
This story was originally published September 24, 2021 at 2:36 PM.
