Humboldt Health Officials Encourage Local Youth 12 To 15 To Get Pfizer Poke, Confirm Over 40 Cases Locally of B.1.1.7 UK Variant Of Concern In Humboldt, Aims For June 15th Reopening, and More

The Humboldt County Joint Information Center hosted a virtual news conference to provide an update on the county’s COVID-19 response, including vaccination efforts, and answer questions from local media. Panelists included Humboldt County Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman, Social Services Deputy Branch Director Kelly Hampton, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Operations Chief Sofia Pereira and Vaccine Task Force Member and Family Nurse Practitioner Lindsey Mendez.

For this type of report, the Joint Information Center (JIC) takes the questions from the media in a zoom meeting, and officials give their responses.The resulting video, called a Virtual Press Conference, is then posted to the county’s COVID-19 YouTube channel at the end of the day.

Here are some of the main points covered in the May 12th Virtual Press conference, with a summary of answers from Humboldt County officials.

Meriah Miracle:  Good morning and thank you for joining us for the May 12th COVID-19 virtual news conference. My name is Mariah Miracle and I’m a public information officer working in the Humboldt County Joint Information Center (JIC).

Let’s start by introducing this week’s panelists, Vaccine Task Force Member and Family Nurse Practitioner Lindsey Mendez,  the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Operations Chief Sofia Pereira,Social Services Deputy Branch Director Kelly Hampton- and just really quickly for those of you who aren’t familiar social services oversees many of the county’s benefit programs such as Calfresh, Cal works and employment services like Welfare to Work and the employment training division- and we’re also joined by County Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman.

So each panelist will now give a brief update on what they’ve been working on in relation to the COVID-19 response before taking questions.  Let’s start with  Vaccine Task Force Member and Family Nurse Practitioner, Lindsey Mendez.

1 minute in:

FNP, Lindsey Mendez:  Hi Humboldt, I’m here today to give you a little bit of an update about what’s happening with the COVID-19 vaccine right now in our county we do have exciting news all around our country right now that we’re going to be opening up Pfizer to the younger population of 12 to 15. 

We are hopeful that this is going to happen by the end of this week right now though I would like to warn everybody that we do not have mass vax clinics currently prepared for Pfizer this week but we’re hoping to organize a clinic in the later days and that will be covered by another one of my task force members, Sophia.

With that said though, about the 12 to 15 population, I would urge parents to take the time now and sit down with their children and talk to them about the importance of this vaccine and hopefully getting rid of some fear about needles or vaccinations so that we can end the pandemic sooner, and we can all be safer and healthier.  With mobile vaccination updates it’s exciting to know that the state of California has helped us with putting a box on MyTurn to say if you are homebound and in need of a vaccination, because you cannot get to an appointment with your doctor or go to a mass vacs, and so we are currently getting these lists from the state of homebound patients so that we can put them into our mobile program. 

So I’m going to just say that one more time if you are using MyTurn, which hopefully you are to find your vaccine, and you are homebound there is a box on MyTurn when you go to register for your vaccine to say that you cannot make it to your appointment and we are…currently utilizing that in our planning for other mobile vaccination sites.  We are going to be in Samoa this week on Friday and if you are in that area you may be getting a lot of notifications from community partners but we encourage anybody who would like to get their vaccine in Samoa to please go to MyTurn and look for that clinic today and you can sign up this is a Johnson clinic or Johnson Johnson and that’s our big updates with mobile. Rest assured we are going to be going to other locations in the county as we continue to plan and the task force is working on these sites right now also facilities who need to have a vaccination.  I think that currently we are doing second doses in our own clinics of Moderna and Pfizer and so if you need your second dose appointment, please be sure to show up on time to the appointment that you’ve been given or if you need to change your appointment go to MyTurn or call the JIC at 441-5000. 

My last thing about platforms aside from MyTurn is Vaccine Finder. Just reminding everybody that there’s another place that you can go to called vaccines.gov and you can look at using your own zip code for a specific vaccination type say you want to use Pfizer because of age, then you can click that button and you can find any place in Humboldt County or in your surrounding area that may be giving that vaccine whether it be CVS or Walgreens or Rite Aid, so please use your resources.

Talk to your children about what it means to be vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine and also be sure to be looking for clinics that might be in your area.

MM: Thanks Lindsey.  Sophia, can you share an update from the Emergency Operations Center? 

4 mins 45 secs in: 

Sophia Pereira:  Yeah, good morning everyone I’m Sophia Pereira. I work for Public Health and serve as the EOC’s operation institute for the public and response. So for a bit of context the  EOC operations section is focused on the planning and execution of the incident’s objectives such as vaccination testing and contact reasoning. Our operations section is mostly made up of Public Health and Department of Health and Human Services staff since this is a public health emergency. 

So, we in the operations section make sure that our operations on the ground have the resources that they need. For example, we’re working with our logistics team to make sure that we have the staffing and supplies ready for our vaccination clinics. So last week was our first full week of mobile clinics, and this is a part of our transition moving from that mass vaccination model that Lindsey has referred to that we have done over the past several months and this approach is going to be a blend of these, are those that are in care homes those that are homebound and reaching harder to reach communities – whether there’s transportation barriers or other barriers – we want to make sure that we’re reaching people where they are, and this will be something that we will be doing for the foreseeable future.

This mobile outreach approach and so like Lindsey mentioned with the 12 to 15 year olds now newly eligible for Pfizer this week. We are planning a first dose Pfizer clinic next week that we will be putting the information into MyTurn probably later today, so stay tuned for that.  We want to make sure that we’re providing the first dose clinic for those that are newly eligible, also our testing team under the North Coast Testing Partnership, this is a partnership that we have with the United Indian Health Services, and recently there’s been a launch of adding vaccination to that so UIHS is providing that vaccination support and if folks are interested in the schedule for the North Coast Testing Partnership, either to get tested or to get vaccinated- you can go to North Coast Testing Partnership and they go to communities like for example, they were just out there on Monday and saw a really positive response.

So definitely encourage folks to go to NorthCoastTestingPartnership.org to get that schedule as well. thank you

MM: Thanks very much, Sophia. Kelly can you please share an update?

7 mins in:

Kelly Hampton:  Good morning everyone, my name is Kelly Hampton, I’m the Deputy Branch Director for Social Services.  My COVID update is just to say that Social Services has been open the whole time during the pandemic, we’ve never closed our doors.  We have enhanced services so that there are multiple ways for people to apply for our benefits either in person online or by phone so we have made adjustments so that we can be more available to our community in non-traditional ways, for most parts we would have people visit our office, now they can get services provided multiple ways. I don’t have too much to add, because it’s been business as usual for us during COVID. We are considered essential services like much of DHHS, so it hasn’t been too much of a change other than dealing with the additional benefits that the state and the feds have given or released to give to our consumers to help get them through the pandemic.

So we get a lot of questions regarding those additional benefits, and we answer those questions primarily through our call center, but other than that I’ll wait to see if people have questions for me. 

MM: Thanks very much Kelly.  Dr. Hoffman?

9 mins in:

Dr. Hoffman:  Thanks, everyone, for being here so as we know we’ve seen an increase in COVID activity in our community in the last few weeks and I just want to take the time to continue to remind everyone that COVID is definitely still here, and circulating among us.

You know, we want to continue this vaccination effort as quickly as we can, to you know, get to those folks who haven’t had a chance yet, have barriers like Lindsey and Sophia mentioned, that we’re trying to overcome by you know reaching out into the mobile vaccination unit, going out to outlying remote communities looking for places where people are…wanting the vaccine but just haven’t had the resources or the means to get to one of our clinics yet.  So, and you know, I want to remind everyone the steps that are needed to continue to protect us in this pandemic, and vaccination is definitely way at the top of the list now.  Also [we] are going to continue to recommend masking and distancing and avoiding large gatherings.  

Cases we’re seeing are often involving gatherings of folks who are unvaccinated and not using all the precautions that would help stop the spread.  We’ve seen an increase in the UK variant in our community with last week more than 40 samples coming back sequenced for the UK variants. We know that that’s now the dominant strain circulating in Humboldt County.  We have seen the hospitalizations come down a bit in the last week, which is, has been really good news although I don’t think we’re totally out of the woods yet.  

Because of our continued drive to look for people who need to get vaccinated who want to get vaccinated in overcoming those barriers, you know other things we’ve been working on this week like Lindsey and Sophia mentioned, we are preparing to open for the 12 to 15 year-olds and you know preparing providers in the community, preparing our own clinics through public health so that we’re ready and have appointments available for those who are eager to find an appointment.  I would definitely encourage you, like Lindsey said to get on MyTurn tomorrow, vaccine finder, both of those should show some appointments. Say, we might not have them in Public Health until tomorrow or the next day, but you know, look for those later this week but there could be others.

And just want to say if you’re a member of a doctor’s office who has been doing vaccination, those doctors, as they have throughout the whole pandemic will reach out when clinics are available to that age group so you know, I don’t, I want to encourage people not to call their doctor to ask for an appointment because we do want to give them time to prepare but I would encourage people to reach out to their doctor to ask some questions if they are unsure about this should my child get the vaccine, you know should I get the vaccine as an adult, I think that talking to a trusted medical provider is a really important way for us to get the information that we need and obviously in a mass vaccination clinic we don’t always have a trusted medical provider there–your doctor’s not there and so if you’re if you’re unsure about getting this vaccine because you haven’t talked to your doctor that would be a great reason to reach out to them and then go on touch MyTurn or vaccine finder and look for an appointment so those are the things that we’ve been working on I’ve been working on at public health and look forward to the discussion thank you thank you Dr. Hoffman.

MM:  Now we’ll take questions from reporters and we’ll start with The Time-Standard Isabella Vanderheiden.

13 mins in:

The Time-Standard:  Hi, thank you so much for taking my questions. So the county remains orange after fears that we were going to revert to the red tier. On Tuesday there were 45 cases reported today from over the weekend and then only four reported yesterday.  So can you explain that drop and how the county’s metrics shifted to keep us in the orange tier?

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah so under the new rules for the blueprint we have to have both the case count for 100,000 and the test positivity in us in a more restrictive tier to consider moving backwards into that tier so last week we had both of those in the red tier both the case count and the test positivity we would have to get two weeks of that in order to move into the red tier and on top of that now they would be looking at our hospitalization rates and our hospital capacity before they would definitely move us back so this week’s case count was still in the red tier but the test positivity rate came down into the orange tier. 

So we did not meet both metrics which allowed us to get an orange tier for for this week so you know just in general moving forward with the blueprint it is much much more difficult to become more restrictive in tiers and that’s by design. Now that we have a significant portion of our population vaccinated and protected the reason for the strong protect public health measures of stay at home and restricting businesses, restricting public places, public movement, was to protect the unvaccinated and protect the hospital capacity. And at this point we do not have a fear or worry that the hospitals would be overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, so that’s the reason for the rollback of the protections. That’s the reason we’re moving forward. The state is intent on moving forward with June 15th as the removal of all the blueprint restrictions on businesses and going back to you know a much more open and normal society.

15 mins 30 secs:

The Time-Standard:  Thank you, and I would just follow up with asking, you know, have we seen this outbreak that we’ve been experiencing, has it subsided or even passed, would you say? 

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah, well I think that’s part of what we’re seeing with the numbers coming down there’s still solidly you know the red tier metric for case count and orange geometric for  percent positivity so I don’t, I don’t think we’re, you know people are always asking ‘are we headed to yellow tier yet’ and I think the the definite answer that is no,the numbers need to come down dramatically for that. 

We are still seeing continued spread among businesses, schools, daycares you know not necessarily in those places, but you know people who are you know related and and hanging out together outside of work or outside of school or you know in the daycares are so we’re seeing this kind of spread still across the community so I think you know we need the way out of this is to continue to vaccinate to get everyone who wants a vaccine to get one to continue masking continue distancing and avoiding gatherings and until we can get more folks vaccinated thank you that’s all for now.

MM: Thanks Isabella. Any other questions about tier assignments from other reporters?

17 mins 15 secs in:

North Coast News:  I have a question kind of related to this. Dr Hoffman you kind of touched on this a little bit ago- the state reopening and dropping that blueprint on June 15th- he said yesterday that if vaccination rates continue to stay constant that we’re going to reach the metrics required to drop that on June 15th.

Do you believe Humboldt is prepared to open up on June 15th?

And on that date, is public health kind of, maybe for lack of a better phrase, gearing up for this date?

Dr. Hoffman:   You know in the event that you know the situation with the virus were to expand when things open up. 

Yeah, we’re definitely preparing.  The main efforts we have going on are going to continue you know regardless of what date the state puts on reopening and those are vaccination efforts, and contact tracing efforts, and I don’t see an end to those anytime in the near future. 

Both of those will be going strong and robust public health efforts well into the summer and and into the fall as well so that’s what we’re preparing for and again you know these public health measures that were released were removing you know we’re there for a specific reason to protect the hospital capacity and we you know we don’t see the high likelihood of our hospitals being overwhelmed. Not to say we’re not going to see hospitalizations. We’re still seeing them. We’re seeing them from the current cases and we’re going to continue to see them as long as we have pockets of unvaccinated people out there who this virus can infect. 

MM:  Any other questions on tier assignments?  All Right, The North Coast Journal, Thad Greenson.

19 mins 30 secs in:

North Coast Journal:  Hi thank you, Mariah. Dr. Hoffman you mentioned I believe at yesterday’s Supervisors meeting that Humboldt County is working on developing local genomic sequencing capacity, and I’m curious to hear from you about that effort when you think it might get online and how that might help COVID response locally? 

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah, it’s a really exciting project.We have an incredible lab here for Humboldt County. Has been for a really long time and this goes back decades the lab has a long story history of being a really strong public health lab so we expect that later this month or early part of June we should have sequencing online in the county and I think it’ll increase our response time for for this pandemic for COVID-19 response and being able to get sequencing done faster since we will be able to do it in county.

I…don’t think it will increase the numbers at all because we’ve already been sequencing at quite high levels we anything that’s sequenceable that comes from our lab gets sent to biohub for sequencing but you know just having that capacity here and having the ability to prioritize samples if we have an outbreak and we want to run those right away will allow us to be more responsive and it has other applications as well  or other you know viruses other infectious diseases so it’s it’s exciting it’s another great addition to this really strong robust lab.

21 mins in:

NCJ:  excellent, and then I guess just to follow up quickly on that is, this was made possible through some kind of grant funding or partnership with other organizations- how are we making this happen?

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah you know given the pandemic there is quite a bit of funding for this out there and so that’s where the funding is coming from from grants and you know related to the pandemic.  And the federal government’s encouraging you know increasing sequencing they’ve been bringing online lots of labs and the state has been supportive of this as well. 

MM:  Thank you, Thad. Do any other reporters have questions about genomic sequencing or the public health lab all right let’s see we’ve got Hank Sims from the Lost Coast Outpost.

22 mins in:

Lost Coast Outpost:  Hi, good morning.  My only question was if anybody can tell us to what degree the recent surge here in Humboldt County has been driven by churches or church activity? 

Dr. Hoffman:  So you know there’s a lot of cases going on all over the place we we know that some of those are in churches some of those are related to businesses I mentioned daycares you know when i say schools, I don’t mean to say there’s been any spread within the schools we haven’t seen any spread within schools, but we have had cases of children who go to schools, and have had to quarantine folks. 

Do you know what degree that’s been associated with a specific church outbreak? It is hard to say because we don’t know for sure even if everyone in that group was associated with the church, how many of those people were at services, we didn’t we weren’t able to interview every single person there.  But I certainly think what we saw was the vir you know the uk variant was introduced into our community sometime around late March early April and and really spread and and probably you know was propagated through large gatherings to happen around that time.  So whether those were in church or outside of the church was really difficult to say but certainly they, many of the folks who were infected during that time period were associated with the church.

So I think it’s you know, a lot of the churches are aware of this and they understand that you know this is happening and that they’re still susceptible and so taking those measures to you know mask and distance and use precautions so that they don’t spread this to their congregation.

24 mins 15 secs in:

LoCO: I guess just yeah as a sort of follow-up I mean you’re talking about genomic sequencing a moment ago so my understanding is maybe maybe incorrect or or not quite correct but is that you can develop you know very details like sort of ‘outbreak trees’ to determine you know where you know a patient zero, as it were, of a particular strain and that’s spreading out into the community, so it would seem like perhaps that this is even quantifiable- like how much how how much it was just to say the Pentecostal church outbreak how much o f the recent spread you know how much of the is related to that?

Dr. Hoffman:  Well what we know from the genomic sequencing data is that there are multiple branches of the tree of the UK variant that got introduced in our community so there was no singular singular introduction into Humboldt County so it probably came from multiple sources and yes the Pentecostal Church outbreak was a large propagator of that again those people those folks you know many of them we were not able to interview.  So we don’t know you know were they at gatherings outside do they you know was it in their workplaces, but you know certainly there’s an association among those folks in that church that were exposed over that time period of early part of April. and and we can see you know but again we can see that branching of of the sequencing showing that there’s multiple lines coming from multiple parts of the community, and so it’s it’s basically, the I think the take home from that, is that it’s out there in the community now and it’s the dominant strain and you know it got into the Pentecostal Church the same way it got into other businesses and other daycares, and then because it’s a close-knit congregation. You know it was able to spread easily especially among a large, unvaccinated group of folks. 

26 mins 30 secs in: 

LoCO:  And just my last question on that… is public health getting cooperation from church leadership from church communities are they  participating with contact tracing efforts?

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah the Pentecostal Church leadership was very cooperative with us. You know we, we worked closely to get information out through their channels, you know to folks in their organization. They, you now, worked with us around closing and reopening so yes I would say that was a very beneficial relationship you know we are meeting resistance from contact tracing across the board across the community and it’s something that I hope we we could encourage you know, everyone to participate in because it’s a really powerful tool. You know if we want to say get to yellow tier we got to be able to find the virus and stop it from spreading and it’s really difficult to do that if we don’t know who’s infected who they’ve had contact with and if people aren’t you know talking about who their contacts are so I don’t think that has anything to do with a particular church or organization or a business it’s something we’re seeing across the board we’ve been seeing it for for months now I think there’s some fear and some fatigue but the more we can  participate in that contact tracing it’s going to help our community.

MM:  thank you thank you Hank any other questions on that topic? all right. 

28 mins 30 secs in: 

KMUD News:  Lauren Schmidt, thank you so much for taking the time.  Yesterday a local non-profit announced that they will be holding a festival this June in Southern Humboldt, and will not be requiring attendees to wear masks, yet they say that this event is in compliance with the county’s COVID-19 protocols.  

Is that true, and what is the likelihood that this could become a super spreader event? 

Is DHHS concerned?

Dr. Hoffman:  The state has a statewide masK mandate and as far as I know that it’s not going to go away so any public gathering of people who are in a public space would have to be masked unless they were entirely vaccinated that could be you know some situation where you know people could go if if you were in a fully vaccinated private event that you know everyone had proof of vaccination it could be outdoors without masks, without distancing.

29 mins 30 secs in:

KMUD News:  And just really quickly for clarification with the governor’s full reopening, masking will still be required – is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Hoffman:  That’s what we’re hearing, yeah the my my understanding is, I mean so the blueprint is about restrictions on businesses and public spaces, public and private events, the mask order from the state is a separate order, and I have not heard that they are going to repeal the mass order on June 15th.  

30 mins in:

KMUD News: And finally on this topic, could that non-profit face any repercussions for holding a large-scale event and not wearing masks?

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah I think any organization, business, private event, public event venue, you know who doesn’t follow COVID protocols, could face repercussions from you know potential backlash from the community obviously, you know press – bad press – and legal ramifications from someone if they were to become ill at a gathering that was clearly not following the guidelines.

So what, you know I’m not… I think that the guidance is out there we’re encouraging people to follow the guidance to helping them to understand which guidances apply to their events, we are moving away from the certification of events you know given the retirement of the blueprint and the retirement of those restrictions, but we do encourage people to continue to utilize the precautions that are there to to reduce the spread. Because like I said, the virus is not going to go away after June 15th.

It’s still here, we’re still going to see cases. So you know, continuing to do things like controlling the crowds, controlling the mixing having people masked you know potentially having people distanced or having a safer event with everyone there being vaccinated or tested are still possibilities going forward from June 15th that people can choose to do, and choose to make their events much safer for those who are involved in it.  

MM:  Thank you Lauren. Any other questions on that topic?  All right, Redwood News, Taylor Elliott.

32 mins in:

Redwood News:  Hi, so I know that we’ve talked a little bit already, about vaccines for kids and that authorization, but could you again just kind of go over how soon the county will be vaccinating kids for, you know, those parents that are looking forward to it? 

And then could you also talk about just kind of the importance of vaccinating kids when it comes to the overall vaccination effort and fighting COVID? 

MM: Lindsey can you start with that one?

Lindsey Mendez:   I think that to start with the 12 to 15 as what Sophia and I were saying before is that when we were talking about public health clinics we are currently planning a clinic for Pfizer so that we can have a public health backed mass vacs for a larger age range.

Right now, when it comes to how soon in Humboldt County, that is also dependent upon if the other pharmacies and other locations that who have Pfizer are holding clinics and you can find that on vaccinefinder.gov .  

So that will tell us even even if it gets approved right today, and it starts to open up on MyTurn, you will have to look for a location that has that specific vaccine. And I’m just trying to be very sure of saying that, so I would encourage people to go on to vaccine finder and not just MyTurn so that they can see that. 

And then the secondary thing about 12 to 15 year olds, and what does that play with the pandemic.  Well when you’re looking at herd immunity of any population with any vaccine, you want the most people possible to be vaccinated so that you can get to herd immunity faster.  And when you are losing a part of your population who is allowed to be vaccinated because of safety regulations, we’re always very happy when the safety regulations say it’s good to vaccinate even more parts of the population so that we can have herd immunity faster.  And that’s what I’m going to say as my part, and then I would like Dr. Hoffman to try to follow up with some of his thoughts about this.

34 mins 30 secs in:

Dr. Hoffman:  Yeah I know definitely Lindsey hit it all right there. We’re planning for it,  we will have clinics next week that through public health those will likely be up either later today, or tomorrow latest, you know by Friday.  So check back on MyTurn for the public health clinics.  

I know that many of the providers in the community are also preparing and and so they will be reaching out through their networks and their local you know either through the the doctors that they work with, or through their local, you know media or social media, to let people know when those clinics are going to be available. 

And then vaccine finder, the federal pharmacy partnership program, you know we don’t know exactly when those are going to go live with the 12 to 15 year old but I know many of the pharmacies had already put up information as of the last few days saying, you know check back.

So we’re hopeful that many of those will start to vaccinate that age range as soon as potentially later this week or early part of next week.  So and then just you know, for what it means to open it up, yeah it’s more people who can get vaccinated so it’s going to decrease the potential pool of folks who can get infected and that’s you know one step closer to being done with all this.

36 mins in:

Redwood News: And then just following up is just for any you know parents, families, caregivers or whoever that might be on the fence about vaccinating your kids you know what would be your message or your recommendations to them?

Lindsey Mendez:  I would say what Dr. Hoffman said originally about finding a trusted care provider  who you understand or who understands maybe you and your family who you know who you’ve been taking your child to or your family too consistently.  

If you would like resources you can go onto the CDC website you can also go to CHOP, which is the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s website, and they have a lot of researchers and articles who will discuss the COVID vaccine in regards to pediatrics. So again it’s the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. They are experts in their field and they often will help you with understanding vaccines, but I can’t encourage it enough to talk to a pediatrician or talk to a doctor  or a nurse practitioner who works in primary care who you know very well and who you trust. 

37 mins 30 secs in:

MM:  Thank you Taylor.  And I do want to clarify both Dr Hoffman and Lindsay have mentioned vaccine finder and vaccines.gov those are the same website. vaccinefinder.org became vaccines.gov so both work, but if you want to go straight to the source you can go to vaccines.gov .  All right.

38 mins in:

NCJ: Yeah so just as to specifically, to the 12 to 15 set and I guess then hopefully down the line vaccinating, vaccines becoming open to more children, I’m curious to hear from Dr. Hoffman and Ms. Mendez, how they feel like vaccination rates in those demographics might impact what in-person instruction and local schools look like come the fall?

Dr. Hoffman:  I don’t think it’ll have any impact I mean obviously we want as many kids to get vaccinated as possible and so we’re gonna just like we have with all the other groups we’re gonna create opportunities, try to break down barriers, promote the vaccine, talk about its safety, talk about what it does for for people and encourage people to get the facts if they are on the fence or have questions. And so you know, but as far as vaccination rates affecting how schools are going to be open in the fall. I don’t see that having much of an impact.  Meaning that I think that schools will make those decisions not… based on other factors, not on vaccine.

MM:  Thanks very much. any other questions about vaccinating 12 to 15 year olds?

39 mins 30 secs in:

Times-Standard:  Yeah, I would just ask does the county have enough vaccine to begin vaccinating this group?

Lindsey Mendez:  Yes, when we say vaccinating this group, I do believe yes the county has enough vaccine to begin vaccinating 12 to 15 year olds at this time, and it’s not just because of  what the public health department has, but also what other providers have who are partners in this effort who will be vaccinating children in this age group. And as they were as Dr Hoffman was just saying and also Sophia and myself about how we are going to be planning a clinic specifically moving forward for this age group to be included it’s also true that the allocation rounds happen weekly  again and I will say that as I said in the past so as we move to the end of this week we are going to be entering a new round of allocations and shipments and how will we  now we will be ordering Pfizer will obviously change as we open it to more ages thank you 

Dr. Hoffman: I’ll just add to that, we have sufficient supplies of Pfizer right now in the county for public health as well as all the providers who want to vaccinate in this age group. 

MM:  Any other questions on vaccinating the 12 to 15 age group? All right, Michael Patterson, North Coast News, thanks for your patience.

41 mins 15 secs in:

NCN:  yeah no problem. I just have one quick question about breakthrough cases for Dr Hoffman.  We’ve just been receiving a lot of inquiries from viewers about the status of you know how many breakthrough cases have been seen in the community.  I believe last month we heard about 10 breakthrough cases mostly in healthcare workers that were already testing regularly and were non-symptomatic. 

We were just trying to see how many breakthrough cases have been identified now and if that trend of being mostly among healthcare workers and being non-symptomatic is still the case?

Dr. Hoffman:  I don’t have specific numbers for you, we’re not really you know there’s so many things we have to track. That’s not one of the things we’re tracking really closely as far as numbers. I mean what we do track is we’re really trying to pay attention to are there any cases of severe COVID, someone who’s hospitalized, someone who’s really sick who is vaccinated – fully vaccinated  – and that is not something we’ve seen at all.

So I don’t have an update on specific numbers. I, you know, generally though the trend has continued to follow what we know from the data from the trials from other counties across California which is that it’s a very small number of folks who are getting you know true breakthrough. Some of those are probably also false positives; they have a very very low level of virus that you know could just be viral particles.  

So you know, we’re we’re we’re trying to keep a close eye on that we’re trying to do genomic sequencing on these if we can to see if they’re sequenceable virus and so you know if there’s any significant updates on that you know, I think the things that we should be watching out for what I’m watching out for what public health officials are watching out for health officers is again do we start to see people getting really sick from who are vaccinated. We we know that people are going to get cold like symptoms still even if they’re vaccinated just like with the flu vaccine it doesn’t prevent 100% of the flu cases. You might get a milder case much more mild case it’s going to prevent people from getting hospitalized it’s going to reduce our ICU admission rate for the flu the same for COVID vaccine so those are the things that we’re watching out for going forward not necessarily that it’s preventing 100% of mild symptoms in people who are vaccinated.

MM:  Any other follow-up questions on breakthrough cases? all right well, we have about 10 minutes left.  I would like to just run back through and give reporters an opportunity to ask one more question. So we’ll go back to Time-Standard, Isabella?

T-S: Nothing for me thank you.

MM:  great thanks very much Isabella, and Thad from the North Coast Journal?

44 mins 20 secs in:

NCJ: Oh yeah, thank you. So understanding that last week there were some hiccups with the transition to the state TPA and shipments arriving at Humboldt County, I just want to, guess I’m just asking if you guys are confident that those have been ironed out and that shipments will be more consistent moving forward?

MM: Sophia can you speak to that?  

Sophia Pereria: Sure and if Dr Hoffman has anything to add he’ll feel free to chime in, I will say just with any emergency response you know we are agile and we adapt to the circumstances that are thrown our way. So we can’t say for certain something that’s out of our control can be perfectly smoothed out, but we do everything in our power to make sure that we have enough vaccine supply for our communities. 

So the moment we had any inkling that something wasn’t gonna get shipped to us, we went straight into action mode and made sure that we secured enough supplies to make sure we were able to meet all of our appointments, and so that’s the commitment we can make to our community is that we’re gonna do everything we can to make sure there’s enough vaccine supply, but there are definitely going to be external factors that are beyond our control and we can only hope that those things get smoothed out over time as well well. 

Dr. Hoffman: I’ll  just add that Sophia is being a little humble right now, because she really, you know went to the mat for this, and and made this happen made those doses get here when they needed to and along with a lot of folks at the EOC.  So you know just she deserves a lot of kudos for that and yeah it was  we were in a precarious position for a number of days last week  you know but we we did exactly what the system is designed to do, and there is an emergency we put it into action and Sophia and the rest of the team were able to secure the doses in a very short amount of time. And we did not have to cancel a single clinic. 

I do think that going forward we’ve identified some concerning parts of communication and making sure that we close the loop much more firmly with the TPA each week around our allocations and the ordering system, which has been a you know another process that just like the name of a website might change week to week, sometimes the ordering process changes week to week and you know that can sometimes lead to confusion. And something like this is happening, but we all work together and it worked out great and I don’t think that’ll likely happen again.

MM:  Thank you both. Lost Coast Outpost, Hank Sims, do you have another question?

LoCO: no I’m good thank you.

MM:  Let’s see, Lauren from KMUD?

47 mins 20 secs in:

KMUD News: Thank you, really quickly.  You know vaccine hesitancy along with misinformation remains a big problem.  

Can you just briefly comment on the importance of verifying health information and just debunk any prevalent myths you’re currently hearing? 

MM: Can you speak to that one Lindsey?

Lindsey Mendez: Sure. As I’ve mentioned before, vaccine hesitancy can come in many forms, and one of the forms is myths.  We have been trying to remove many of the barriers that are the other forms of vaccine hesitancy, like transportation and geography, and communication barriers, but this one is probably the most difficult.  

When it comes to any topic that can have myths or misinformation, we would always encourage people that when they are using something like social media to stop and ask yourself, do you always believe everything your friends and family tell you, regardless of checking it twice?  Probably not. We often have to check information all the time on news sources, and also things that our friends and family members tell us, so I would encourage everybody to try to go to a source and like the CDC, but if you don’t want to just use the CDC there are many other reputable sources that are accredited hospitals and research institutions in our country, including our own UC campuses in California – Stanford, Johns-Hopkins as I mentioned before, CHOP which is the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – there are so many resources that you can go to so that you can read or understand on videos that they give you for training or community understanding with videos for persons that are not medical so that you can see if the information that you’re being told about a medication or a vaccination is actually accurate across the board.

I know it sounds like a lot of work but there’s nothing in comparison to having your information wrong, and not getting vaccinated, and possibly being ill or dying from COVID-19.  So I would encourage everyone to take the time to look for reputable sources that are not just on social media. thank you

50 mins in:

Dr. Hoffman:  Thanks Lindsey, yeah.  And I wanna , like how she’s used the phrase – this comes in a lot of different flavors right – this is not one thing what we’re seeing right now, and actually the data is suggesting that the biggest group out there who hasn’t been vaccinated yet are the group who want to get vaccinated, they are accepting the vaccine, but there are barriers to it.  They have to work, they have kids, they have a tight schedule, they can’t afford gas to get to a mass vaccination site, or a pharmacy that’s 20 or 30 minutes from their home or their place of work, and so that’s actually the biggest group out there right now who isn’t vaccinated. 

So we’re working hard on that group to make sure that they break down those barriers we get to them we get out into those communities we offer as many solutions for that as possible the next group, is a group of folks who are you know the on the fence group who are just a little bit more ambivalent or ambiguous they they probably you know given the right circumstances would would take it, and that’s the group that I think that all of us, you know, family, friends, if you have someone in your network, your family, who’s like that – reassuring them telling them about your experience – you know I got the vaccine I’m fine it wasn’t that bad and now I feel safer. And that can have a really big impact on that person as in addition to physicians and providers who see those folks giving them their strong recommendation.

 it’s okay to tell a patient if you’re a provider, I strongly recommend you get this, in fact that’s one of the most important things a provider can do – is to give their strong recommendation.  I did it for myself, I did it for my family, and I think you should do it for you and yourself, and your family. 

And then there’s the folks who have firm strong beliefs against this and that’s a group that’s very difficult to persuade you know there is misinformation out there.  We don’t look to propagate any one specific myth because there are so many.  The best thing we can do for that group is just try to hear them and listen to them, and offer them information that’s truthful and factual in an open way that’s not judgmental or you know, belittling of their firm beliefs. 

That this is you know, something that it’s not, so I think that’s those are the groups we’re left with and we’re chipping away at that as we go into the summer and the fall months you know and trying to make as many opportunities as possible for all of those groups to get vaccinated.

MM:  Thank you both. Taylor Elliott, Redwood News?

Redwood News:  Nothing for me thank you

MM:  Thanks very much.  Michael Patterson, North Coast News?

NCN:  Yeah nothing for me either, thank you.

MM:  Great. Thank you all very much for joining us.  We will see you again next week. Thank you to our panelists and our media representatives, have a great day.    

Community members with questions or concerns are encouraged to call 441-5000 for additional information. 

View the Humboldt County Data Dashboard online at humboldtgov.org/dashboard , or visit humboldtgov.org/DashboardArchives to download today’s data. 

For the latest information on COVID-19, visit cdc.gov or cdph.ca.gov . Local information is available at humboldtgov.org or by contacting [email protected] or by calling 707-441-5000. 

Some Safeway, CVS Pharmacy, Rite Aid, Walgreen’s, and Walmart locations offer COVID-19 vaccination appointments. Find out who is eligible for vaccination and see if there are appointments available at one of these locations by clicking on the links below.

Safeway: mhealthappointments.com/covidappt

CVS Pharmacy: cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine?icid=cvs-home-hero1-link2-coronavirus-vaccine

Rite Aid: https://www.riteaid.com/covid- 19

Walgreen’s: walgreens.com/findcare/vaccination/covid-19

Walmart: walmart.com/cp/1228302 

Sign up for COVID-19 vaccination: MyTurn.ca.govInformation

LocalCOVID-19 vaccine: humboldtgov.org/VaccineInfo

Panel DataCOVID-19 Humboldt County: humboldtgov.org/Dashboard

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