From Contra Costa Health:
Contra Costa Health (CCH) recommends that everyone 6 months and older get the new COVID-19 vaccine as soon as available through their healthcare providers.
Healthcare providers, including CCH, and commercial pharmacies will likely begin receiving the new vaccine by next week.
The vaccine, approved this month by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, protects against strains of COVID-19 that are currently circulating.
“This COVID-19 vaccine is updated to be effective against variants of the virus that our residents are most likely to encounter this winter, the same way that flu vaccine is updated annually,” said Dr. Ori Tzvieli, Contra Costa County health officer. “The older COVID vaccines do not protect against current strains. We really recommend the new vaccine for everyone, but particularly for those who are older or medically vulnerable.”
Everyone 6 months and older is eligible to get a dose of the new vaccine, regardless of past vaccination status, unless they’ve already received a dose of COVID-19 vaccine within the past two months.
Contra Costa County will not host dedicated vaccination clinics, as it did during the federally declared emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which ended earlier this year.
Instead, people who have health insurance should contact their healthcare providers for instructions about how to get vaccinated.
CCH will provide vaccine primarily to Contra Costa Health Plan members, Medi-Cal and Medicare recipients that it serves, and people who do not have health insurance.
The number of daily hospitalizations due to COVID-19 has slowly grown over the course of the summer across the Bay Area and California.
In Contra Costa County, for example, the 7-day average number of new, COVID-related hospital admissions has grown from 5.9 on June 14 to 12.1 on Sept. 9. Services at county hospitals are not currently impacted by COVID-19.
In addition, to help better protect people vulnerable to serious complications from COVID-19 infection, local health departments across the Bay Area today enacted health orders requiring workers at certain medical facilities to wear well-fitting face masks while on the job, from Nov. 1 to April 30 annually.
In Contra Costa, the order applies to workers at acute-care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes, and high-risk outpatient settings such as dialysis and infusion centers. The order does not apply to patients or visitors.
For more information about COVID-19 in Contra Costa County, visit cchealth.org/Covid19.
Wow! I’ve never seen covid-19 vax magnums before. Kind of a minimalist label. I like it. It’s like a Warhol Campbell’s.