Vaccine resistance can interfere with Orange County’s July 4 herd immunity target

Independence Day (Orange County’s goal of achieving herd immunity against COVID-19 by the holiday of July 4) will fail if those who are hesitant to get vaccinated do not act immediately. There is a possibility.

Advertised as This dream, whose goal is for health authorities to complete a county-wide vaccination program, is rapidly diminishing as demand for first doses plummets and state-wide refusal to ship vaccines.

“If you want to get herd immunity by July 4, you need at least 600,000 people in your community to get the COVID vaccine between the beginning of this week and July,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, adjutant. Says. A health official at the Orange County Healthcare Agency said Thursday.

OCHA reports Approximately 54% of the 3.2 million residents of counties over the age of 16 have been vaccinated at least once to date, far from the 70% required to meet the minimum herd immunity threshold. I have.

Demand for appointments has fallen 75% since April, and authorities announced last week that they would close the remaining four super vaccination points as of June 5 and focus on regional and mobile clinics instead. Did.

According to Chinsio-Kwong, the agency has reduced its weekly allocation of shots for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson over the past two weeks, so supply will not exceed demand.

If this trend continues, the formerly proud goal of returning Orange County residents to pre-pandemic health and safety levels will not be achieved until much later in the calendar year.

“In the current percentage of people who come for the first dose, in reality we are looking at Workers’ Day,” said Chinsio-Kwong.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Monday approval The development of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 has begun booking with approximately 159,392 adolescents in Orange County, but could spur efforts to reach herd immunity.

Still, even if all children between the ages of 12 and 15 were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, it was only 4.9% of the total population of Orange County.

Edison High School cheerleader at the signing ceremony in the spring of April 14th. This week, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 years.

(File photo)

OCHA began offering reservations to young residents on Thursday through the Othena smartphone app, which Chinsio-Kwong called the “soft launch.”

Approved for use by young people, Pfizer is the only vaccine allocation still accepted by the authorities. Chinsio-Kwong reported that a batch of 28,000 doses arrived on Thursday.

Emma Jeffrey, who lives in Huntington Beach, didn’t wait for the official words to disappear before making a reservation for her 14-year-old daughter, Tegen.

The health of a teenager born of congenital heart disease kept the family numb during the pandemic, even after Jeffrey, her husband, and her 16-year-old son were vaccinated.

“I haven’t been to a grocery store in the last 15 months. We haven’t even been to a restaurant,” she said. “We were literally like a small island in our house.”

Therefore, about an hour after seeing Facebook telling people under the age of 16 that the vaccine is available, Jeffrey had already scheduled an appointment at Fountain Valley’s CVS pharmacy. ..

“I was constantly checking the tabs on my computer, just like getting a concert ticket,” she said. “I was anxious for her to be shot.”

Julia Bendis, a professional matchmaker living in Rancho Santa Margarita, was vaccinated at the county’s Soka University supersite in early March, but waited much longer for her 15-year-old son Nicholas to qualify for a shot. I had to.

When she heard the news on Thursday, she quickly went online and scheduled a Nicholas slot next week at Rite Aid in Laguna Woods. One week before my 16th birthday.

“If this is what we have to get every year, we should get it now,” she inferred.

A much more difficult sale was Nicholas’ 21-year-old brother Tyler, a junior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who continues to be skeptical about vaccines. It took some persuasiveness from his parents for him to change his point of view.

“We told him he would probably not be able to go directly to college or participate in the internship he received,” she said Thursday. “So he actually goes to his first dose tomorrow — I’m excited.”

Chinsio-Kwong said health officials are serious about orange county vaccinated residents like Bendis with friends and loved ones who are still hesitant to receive shots as interest in vaccines declines. He said he was urging him to start a conversation.

“We need grassroots efforts in the community to reach out to those who may still have questions,” she said. “”[Because] The community knows best what barriers and challenges still exist and need to be overcome. “

She added that if Orange County really wants to achieve independence from COVID-19, that is the best and only hope.

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