Fresno County vaccine progress is up, including kids. But winter surge worries loom
More than 6,500 children between the ages of 5 and 11 in Fresno County have received at least one pediatric dose of COVID-19 vaccine in the two weeks the shots have been available.
That’s more than received vaccines in the first two weeks of the initial vaccine rollout for adults in December 2020.
While it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison because of a variety of factors, it gives Fresno County health leaders reason for optimism as they prepare for the coronavirus to potentially deal another winter surge to the region.
“It’s hard to compare,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for the Fresno County Department of Public Health.
“When the adult vaccine was first introduced, we had a very centralized distribution system, the supplies were short, and there was a very regimented schedule of who could get vaccinated and when” based on occupational or health risk factors.
Over the final two weeks of December, an estimated 5,300 people received at least one shot – a period in which vaccines were limited to front-line health care workers. As weeks and months went by, eligibility for vaccines was expanded to more segments of the population.
But even though more schools returned to in-classroom instruction this fall, children ages 5 to 11 weren’t eligible for the shots until about two weeks ago, when the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control cleared the pediatric doses.
As of Thursday, 6,503 children in the 5-to-11 age range in Fresno County have gotten their first shot of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen. That’s almost 6% of almost 112,000 children in that age group in the county.
The lessons learned in the bumpy early rollout of vaccines to adults are coming in handy now that all but 84,000 of the county’s 1-million-plus residents are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccines.
“We’re optimistic that we’ve learned a lot about the logistics of delivering vaccines,” Vohra told reporters on Friday.
That includes overcoming the same issues of vaccine hesitancy among parents that has slowed demand for the shots for adults over the past six to eight months. “We still need to have critical conversations with parents, with families to address concerns and answer their questions,” Vohra said.
“There was really good growth from Week 1 to Week 2” of pediatric shots, said Joe Prado, assistant director of the county health department.
Community organizations tasked with vaccine outreach and education for rural and hard-to-reach populations, report “that there are families who are excited about getting vaccinated … but there are concerns from parents about waiting a little bit longer before they have their child vaccinated,” Prado added.
“It’s kind of mimicking what we heard at the beginning of the vaccine hesitancy that we were seeing,” Prado said. “We still have a lot of families interested in vaccinating their children now, and so I don’t think we’ve plateaued yet” in demand.
“As we see what happens in the (state) Legislature with any additional school mandates without any exemptions with COVID vaccines, I think that will also assist with the 5-to-11 group being vaccinated,” he added.
Third-dose booster shots
Prado said that over the past week, an average of about 3,300 coronavirus shots have been administered each day to Fresno County residents. That’s an uptick from about 2,000 doses daily a few weeks ago.
Of those doses, about 20% are “booster” doses or third doses for people who already completed their initial vaccine courses earlier this year.
“That means there’s still a lot of first doses and second doses being administered out there,” Prado said. “We’re seeing some really good momentum picking up right here before the holidays. We’re excited about that increase in doses per day.”
Overall across all age groups, more than 56% of eligible Fresno County residents are now fully vaccinated – meaning they’ve either received both doses of the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or one shot of the single-dose Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Another 7.2% of eligible residents are partially vaccinated.
That, however, leaves more than 36% of the county’s population having yet to get even one vaccine shot.
“At least 63% of our population has received at least one dose. That’s a really good number,” Prado said. “We were hoping to hit 70% of our eligible population by the holidays, before this winter. We’ll see if we can increase to that number; that would be great if we were able to do that.”
Vohra addressed the importance of more people getting vaccinated to reduce the potential for a repeat of a deadly winter surge that happened after last year’s Thanksgiving holiday, before vaccines were available to protect people from the virus.
He also said people who may already be fully vaccinated should think of third-dose boosters as “not optional.”
“Once you’re at six months or longer from the Pfizer or Moderna (shots), then you’re immune system really needs that booster to get you fully reinforced,” Vohra said.
“Coming into the winter season, I’m quite concerned that we will have a winter surge and it will be related to a lot of breakthrough infections,” he added.
“These are all folks who took the time and took the effort, educated themselves and got vaccinated the first time around. But unfortunately if they don’t get their booster, they’re setting themselves up to get that breakthrough infection.”
“Hopefully it will be mild, but still, why even risk that if you can get a booster and avoid it altogether?” Vohra asked.
Possible hospital impacts of a surge
Over the past several months, hospitals across the central San Joaquin Valley have been confronted by hundreds of confirmed COVID-19 patients being cared for as inpatients, adding to the burden of a medical system that is also handling an abundance of other illnesses and conditions requiring hospital care.
The volume of hospitalized coronavirus patients in the region – about 250 in Fresno County and more than 460 across Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced, Mariposa and Tulare counties – is about seven times more than it was four months ago.
Hospitals in the region continue to be strained by the number of overall patients requiring care, and most are so full that patients admitted from the emergency department are being held in the ER for hours before a bed is open for them, said Dale Dotson, emergency medical operations coordinator for Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties.
“Beyond COVID, we have to remember that hospitals are already full with everything else,” Vohra said.
“We’re really worried that a winter surge comes on in full force between now and Christmas time,” underscoring the importance of trying to decompress hospitals now as much as possible to prepare for an onslaught of patients.
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 4:03 PM.
