Riverside County issues COVID-19 vaccine amid confusion, long waits

Amid an ongoing shortage of vaccine and health care workers, Riverside County health officials are collaborating with Coachella Valley growers and local health organizations to ensure the region’s agricultural workers get inoculated against the coronavirus as soon as possible.

The county announced this week that farmworkers, as essential workers who have been hit especially hard by COVID-19, are now eligible for vaccination. But with health officials acknowledging that they face myriad barriers to actually getting the shots into the arms of the region’s estimated 6,000 to 7,000 farmworkers beginning next week, they turned to local health providers for help.

Farmworker advocates, farmers and lawmakers have for several months called on officials to prioritize workers for vaccination, plan to provide the shots in places where they live, work and congregate, and develop a targeted public health campaign designed to address workers’ fears about it.

Those challenges were compounded this week, as demand for the shot has far outweighed supply.

The county public health department has just enough doses to cover mass vaccination clinics this weekend, and officials don’t know for sure when they will receive more doses, or exactly how many they will get, public health Director Kim Saruwatari told representatives from area health organizations Friday afternoon.

The county, on Friday, opened registration for 16 additional vaccine clinics through Jan. 22, but appointments booked up in less than two hours.