DAILY REPUBLIC — Monday, January 10, 2022 A7
Boosters: Vaccine rates for extra shot remain low From Page A1 But for younger Californians, getting an additional dose is far less common. Only 47% of those ages 50 to 64 have been boosted. Forty-four counties have boosted less than half their population in this age group. “The case spikes are being driven by the unvaccinated, which are 25 to 45 years old, largely,” Rutherford said. “That’s where we’re seeing the majority of cases, and that’s where the majority of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people are.” Solano County’s booster update percentages for younger and middleage residents show similar declines: 34.9% for ages 50 to 64; 27.1% for ages 18 to 49; and 4.6% for ages 12 to 17, the state reports. Unlike early in the pandemic when vaccines were limited, the slow booster uptake has little to do with availability. “There’s a very robust supply,” said Imperial County Health Officer Munday. According to the state health department, the state stockpile currently has5.6 million available doses – a 39-day supply. MyTurn, the state’s vaccination portal, recently added booster appointments for children ages 12 to 15. “Omicron is here. We can’t abandon the tools that have allowed California
to be one of the safest states throughout the pandemic. Those are vaccines and boosters,” Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said during an update Wednesday. All-patient hospitalizations are approaching 51,000 people, a number just shy of the peak capacity reached during last winter’s surge. Approximately 8,000 of those patients are Covid-19 cases. “To those who haven’t been vaccinated at all: Get your vaccine as quickly as you can. And those who have been vaccinated but haven’t been boosted, please consider getting boosted,” Ghaly said. In Fresno, where Covid-19 has prompted deployment of the National Guard, many health care workers are unable to work due to Covid-19 exposure or infection, further straining their hospital system, officials said. Only a third of eligible residents in Fresno County are currently boosted, according to state data. “The boosted vaccination population is fending off the omicron infections really quickly,” Fresno County Health Officer Vohra said. “For the unvaccinated folks they basically are the ones who are super vulnerable and those are the ones we’re worried about because they’re the ones that land in the hospitals and ICU.”
North of Fresno, officials in sparsely populated Mariposa County are relying heavily on the state’s MyTurn portal to distribute booster shots. Less than a quarter of eligible residents have been boosted. County health officer Dr. Eric Sergienko said mass vaccination clinics have subsided due to decreased demand, fewer resources and privacy concerns in their small community. “Rather than doing clinics with hundreds, we have clinics through MyTurn that are booked out with 30 to 100 people at our scheduled clinics on Tuesdays and Thursday,” Sergienko said. Cases and hospitalizations in Mariposa County have trended younger with a majority of cases occurring among those ages 20 to 40 and a majority of hospitalizations among unvaccinated people ages 40 to 55, department spokeswoman Lizz Darcy said. The statewide surge in infections and hospitalizations is expected to peak during the third week of January, experts say. Hospitalizations remain substantiallybelow pre-vaccine levels. Community organizations and health centers, which have been at the forefront of vaccine education and distribution, say interest in the booster has increased during this current surge. “It seems our community is much
more receptive to receiving the booster than they were originally to get the first dose,” said Bryant Macias, emergency relief supervisor at the United Farmworkers Foundation, which has advocated for priority doses for farmworkers andhelped organize clinics. “The main challenges we have identified are individuals not knowing how long they need to wait before getting the booster shot, whether or not they can get a booster that is different from their initial vaccine, and some folks only wanting the booster if it’s the same kind as their initial dose.” In agricultural counties, like those in the Central Valley, workplace vaccine clinics played an important role in increasing access last spring. Those events for boosters may not be as visible yet because it’s the off season for many crops. But they’re in the plans, said Irene de Barraicua, director of operations with Lideres Campesinas, a nonprofit network of farmworkers based in Oxnard. “We’ve heard from counties and workgroups that are enthusiastic about continuing these efforts,” she said. Kristen Hwang reports on health care and policy for CalMatter. Ana B. Ibarra is a Sacramento-based health reporter for CalMatters. The Daily Republic contributed to this report.
Schools: Risking large loss of money From Page A1
Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/TNS
Firefighters hoisted a ladder to rescue people through their windows after a fire broke out inside a third-floor duplex apartment at 333 E. 181st St. in the Bronx Sunday.
Fire: 19 have died From Page One “What I do know, and we’ve stressed this over and over, the door to that apartment was left open causing the fire to spread and the smoke to spread,” Nigro added. The building includes multiple units converted into duplexes and has spaces hard to reach for firefighters. “It’s a tough place to fight a fire,” an FDNY source said. Public records show the building has multiple open violations for mouse and roach infestations, peeling lead paint and water leaks. One open complaint with city Housing Preservation and
Development makes reference to defective fire retardant material in a first-floor ceiling. On Dec. 28, 2017, a fire started by a boy playing with a stove killed raged through an apartment building at 2363 Prospect Ave. in Belmont, killing four children and eight adults. A 13th victim died at the hospital several days later. That fire spread because the boy’s mom didn’t close the door as she ran out of her burning apartment, allowing the flames to spread up the stairs and throughout the building. It was the worst fatal fire in the city in a quarter-century.
Governor: Warning From Page One sites, distributing millions of Covid antigen tests to local health departments, clinics, county offices of education and schools, and more. This effort includes a $1.4 billion emergency appropriation request to the Legislature for California’s immediate needs, according to a press release Saturday from the governor’s office. The package also includes spending to accelerate vaccination and booster efforts, support frontline workers, strengthen the health care system and battle misinformation. The announcements come as the omicron variant continues to spread rapidly, account-
ing for at least 80% of Covid-19 cases in California, the governor’s office reports. The National Guard plan spreads more 200 Cal Guard members across 50 Optum Serve sites around the state to provide interim clinical staff while permanent staff are hired, add capacity for walkins, assist with crowd control and backfill for staff absences. There are two Optum Serve sites in Solano County, one each in Vacaville and Vallejo. Additional members of the Cal Guard will be deployed this week in similar capacities, the governor’s office reports.
could mean laying off employees or cutting language and art programs. Ultimately, it’ll mean eliminating services many students need, especially in the coming years as they try to recover from the challenges of virtual learning. California schools statewide lost about 23,000 students in 201819. Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, public school enrollment in California dropped by nearly seven times that figure, with more than 160,000 students dropping out. To calculate what it pays to individual districts each year, the state uses average daily attendance, so not only does enrollment matter but so does making sure students are in class every day. A new bill introduced Jan. 3 by State Sen. Anthony Portantino, a San Fernando Valley Democrat, seeks to change this policy and fund schools based on enrollment, which would generate $3 billion for schools statewide. Before Covid-19, low birth rates and migration patterns caused the annual shrinkage of public school enrollment. During the pandemic, kindergarten enrollment fell by about 61,000 students, accounting for much of the overall decline. “Kindergarten is not compulsory,” Sullins, of the San Bernardino district, said. “At our earlier grade levels, a lot of our parents opted to hold their students back.” When physical classrooms reopened in the fall of 2021, stringent rules about quarantine and independent study also hurt attendance. Districts failing to offer independent study to students in quarantine were required to count those pupils as absent, losing out on their attendance-based funding. Sullins said this policy had a “tremendous impact” on attendance rates. District leaders said a sudden drop in funding would punish districts for both drops in enrollment caused by the pandemic and for failing to comply with unreasonable independent study requirements. “The public doesn’t understand,” said Lisa Gonzales, the chief business officer at the Mount Diablo School District. “We’re all facing colossal funding decreases next year.” Gonzales said her 30,000student, Northern California district could lose $24 million if the state does nothing. Gonzales declined to comment on exactly where the district would
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make cuts, but she said she expects to issue layoff notices. She said when making cuts, school districts first figure out what they absolutely need to keep by law, like a teacher in every classroom and transportation for students with disabilities. Then they look at how they could enlarge class sizes and eliminate certain positions. “You don’t have to have a librarian and a counselor,” she said. “Are they important and valuable? Absolutely.” Administrators interviewed by CalMatters raised several possible solutions, but they fell under two general categories – and seek to take advantage of the fact that the state anticipates a big budget surplus. First, the state could increase overall funding to schools by adjusting the formula that determines most of the money districts receive from the state. The formula consists of “base” funding for all students and additional “supplemental” and “concentration” grants for districts that serve English learners, foster children and students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals. “In an ideal world, what would benefit is an increase to the base,” Gonzales said. “It could reverse the attendance issue we’re having.” A second option: The state could cut funding gradually, giving districts more time to downsize. A spokesperson for the governor declined to comment on the contents of the forthcoming proposed budget. The state Legislature is aware of the fiscal crisis looming over districts. Mike Fine, the chief executive officer of the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, spoke at a Nov. 30 hearing for the state Assembly’s Educa-
tion Finance Subcommittee and recommended that districts be temporarily funded based on their three-year average attendance rates. Fine said that pre-pandemic, about 60% of districts were declining. Last year, all but one of the 58 counties in the state had a decline. The governor and Legislature have tried to help districts recover from the pandemic. The 2021-22 state budget ushered historic spending for K-12 education. Much of that went to ongoing funding like sending more money to districts with higher concentrations of at-risk students. Jonathan Kaplan, a senior policy analyst at the California Budget & Policy Center, said these commitments signal that lawmakers in Sacramento are aware of just how hard some communities were hit by Covid-19. “The governor and Legislature deserve credit,” Kaplan said. “The bump in the concentration grant acknowledged there’s a legitimate need out there. Students in these communities need support.” Even so, both the state and local districts underestimated just how low enrollments and attendance rates would plummet this year. “Could they have really known there was going to be such large numbers of students who weren’t coming?” Kaplan asked. “Could they really know how much hardship there would be? I don’t think so.” Joe Hong is the K-12 education reporter for CalMatters.
Pelosi open to virus aid in spending plan Tribune Content Agency
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Photo by Dave Woody for CalMatters file (2019)
A new classroom at Burnt Ranch Elementary School in Trinity County in 2019.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there’s an “opportunity” to add federal coronavirus relief aid to a package of legislation funding the government as a February deadline looms. “It is clear from the opportunity that is there and the challenge that is there,” Pelosi said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” noting that
President Joe Biden’s administration “has not made a formal request for more funding.” Additional funds to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic could be added to a bill that’s needed to fund the government after a stopgap spending measure runs out Feb. 18, she said. “I believe that left to their own devices, the appropriators can get the job done,” Pelosi said. “Something like addi-
tional funding can be in there, can be fenced off for emergency, as would be Covid.” Last week, two senators suggested that additional relief for U.S. restaurants and other service industries hurt by the surge of infections could be added to the spending bills. Sens. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat and head of the Small Business Committee, and Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican,
said they are working to build support for the plan among their colleagues. Pelosi didn’t specify what any extra funding might be used for. Pelosi told CBS that the virus’s “resilience” means it’s spreading faster than in previous phases of the pandemic, underscoring the need for everyone “to get vaccinated, to be masked, to have spatial distancing and the rest. And to be tested, tested, tested.”
