Gov. Newsom, you promised not to forget Fresno. So give us more COVID vaccines
Fresno County got a difficult diagnosis this week related to overcoming the COVID pandemic.
State officials have notified Fresno County public health leaders that in coming weeks, the county can expect no more than 8,000 doses per week of the vaccinations needed to safeguard residents from COVID infections.
At that level, public health’s goal of having 600,000 Fresno County residents fully vaccinated by Aug. 1 is, for all intents, off the table. That 600,000 is what it will take to move to herd immunity from the highly infectious and sometimes fatal disease.
The longer the vaccinating process takes, the more time it will be before life here can return to what is fondly remembered as “normal.”
The 8,000-doses-per-week rate is based on a formula state officials use for divvying up the vaccines statewide.
But actually, it is the state’s estimation of how important Fresno County is within the hierarchy of counties.
At that level, it is clear state officials are not paying attention to the critical work force in Fresno County, namely the thousands of farm and food-production workers that not just California, but indeed the nation, relies on to plant, tend, harvest, process and package the many farm commodities grown here.
That must change, immediately.
Ramping up vaccines
Joe Prado, Fresno County’s community health division manager, said he is ready to accept three times as many vaccines as will be allocated.
“We have demonstrated to the state that we have a distribution system,” he said. “We can get vaccines out efficiently.”
The 8,000 doses per week “will not cut it, it will not meet our needs,” he said.
Right now, to reach the 600,000 vaccination goal, between 50,000 to 60,000 vaccines have to be administered each week countywide. The longer the process drags out, the greater number that must get vaccinated each week.
One major food producer in the Valley — Foster Farms — has already sustained a COVID outbreak that sickened more than 300 of its workers at its Livingston poultry facility.
Fortunately, the company received 1,000 vaccine doses, which it administered to its workers in Fresno on Tuesday.
The central San Joaquin Valley may not have the population of coastal metropolitan areas, and it does not have the number of health-care professionals on the job as those places, either. It is one of the worst parts of the state for the doctor-patient ratio because the Medicare reimbursement is too low — a problem that has existed for years.
Yet it remains the breadbasket of the state.
San Franciscans, do you enjoy those almonds you buy at your local Trader Joe’s? They come from Fresno County. Same for a host of other key crops.
COVID exception
State health officials must either tweak their formula, or make Fresno County an exception based on the critical work force that is literally producing the food everyone enjoys.
Valley lawmakers should press the case to get more doses — many times more — sent to the region. By this summer farmers will start to face the pressure of harvest. That means they need all the healthy field workers they can hire.
Gov. Newsom, you promised early in your tenure not to forget this part of California. Now is the time to step up to that commitment.