More vaccines are headed to California’s vast Central Valley, an agricultural region whose workers and residents have been hard hit by coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
The multi-county region, which includes the cities of Fresno and Bakersfield, will get significantly more vaccines this week dedicated to farmworkers. The shifting allocation comes as California moves to inoculate others beyond health care employees in other essential jobs, including food and farm workers and teachers.
California had been distributing doses based on the estimated number of health care workers and seniors in each county, but is revising its formula as it moves through its planned vaccination tiers.
The state also will take 34,000 doses from a pharmacy that wasn’t using them quickly enough and distributing them to food and agricultural workers through 11 new mobile clinics in the Central Valley, Newsom said.
The clinics will be set up to ensure vaccines get to people who don’t have transportation to a mass vaccination site or can’t navigate the sign-up portal, including in the small city of Arvin, southeast of Bakersfield, where Newsom spoke.
“These are the folks that never took a day off, these are the folks that never complained, these are the folks that wake up every single day and (are) there for the rest of us so we can go about our lives,” Newsom said. “It’s not just Californians who benefit, it’s the folks all across this country and around the world.”