Over 1 Million Doses of Updated COVID-19 Booster Vaccines for CA – Vaccinate All 58 Going Strong
The California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services held a joint briefing with California’s Vaccinate All 58 campaign, Sept. 7, where several physicians from around the state shared information on the updated COVID 19 boosters.
Speakers included – Dr Gil Chávez, who holds Medical and Master of Public Health degrees. He has worked at the Centers for Disease Control for 30 years, and is the founding Chief of the Center for Infectious Diseases, and State Epidemiologist in the California Department of Public Health (CDPH); Dr Maggie Park, Pediatrician, serves as the County Public Health Officer for San Joaquin County; Dr Eva Smith, Family Medicine, Medical Director of K’ima:w Medical Center on the Hoopa reservation in California; Dr Oliver Brooks, Chief Medical Officer and past Chief of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at Watts Healthcare Corporation in Los Angeles, Calif. and Medical Director, L.A. Care Health Plan, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care plans; and Moderator Regina Brown Wilson.
The speakers explained the authorization of the new updated boosters; who’s eligible for the boosters; California’s allocation; and when the public can expect updated boosters to be available.
“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the use of an updated COVID 19 booster for anyone 12 years of age and older, following its advisory committee on immunization practices, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, subsequently the Western State Scientific Safety Review Work Group reviewed the evidence about the updated booster and the workgroup concurred with recommendations for a single booster dose of an updated vaccine for people 12 years of older who have completed a primary COVID vaccine series.
“It is important to note that having these advisory bodies review and approve the booster vaccine is critically important, that really gives us assurance that the vaccines are safe, and that the vaccines are effective.
“These scientific bodies are comprised of the most important scientific experts on the field, and if they all concur that it is safe and effective for us to use these boosters, the approval of an updated booster vaccine is great news as over the past two and a half years COVID vaccines have been a tremendous tool.
“These vaccines have literally saved millions of lives; helped protect us against the worst outcomes of the virus; and frankly helped us move on as a community,” said Dr Chávez.
Speaking about his personal experience with COVID, Dr Chávez said, “I have had my COVID vaccine, my COVID booster, and as much as I never wanted to encounter COVID, I did have an encounter with COVID. Thanks to the vaccine, I was able to have a mild illness and recover quickly without any long-lasting effects. My children, my grandchildren, all are vaccinated, and my children are boosted. They all have had mild cases of COVID and we are very grateful to this vaccine for really allowing us to continue to be a family and stay healthy.”
“The COVID 19 vaccines, like many other vaccinations, require a booster to ensure continued protection against severe disease and death. Protection from infection can decrease over time and booster doses are a safe way to restore protection and reduce severe outcomes of COVID 19.
“We are getting closer to an analogy with the flu vaccines where every year we have to get an influenza vaccine to ensure that we get the updated vaccine with the strains that are circulating around the world. With COVID 19, we are moving in the same direction where we believe that it will be important to have at least an annual booster that contains the most important and latest available protection.
“The new boosters have been updated and strengthened not only to protect against the original strengths of COVID, but also offer improved protection against the new dominant strains that are circulating. These include the two latest Omicron variants that spread so widely during the spring and summer and continue to circulate in our communities. This means that the updated boosters are pooling double duty by increasing immunity against the original coronavirus strength while also protecting against the newer omicron variants.
“The previous COVID boosters will no longer be available. These new updated boosters will now replace the existing booster vaccines for individuals 12 years of age and older.
“To be eligible to get one of these updated boosters, individuals must have completed their primary series that includes two doses at least two months prior to receiving an updated booster and individuals are eligible to receive the updated booster regardless of the previous booster doses received.
“California has received the first 600,000 doses of the new updated boosters and they are becoming available in clinics and pharmacies throughout the state. We are expecting an additional 400,000 doses in the next few days. Our hope is to continue on a path of a low number of cases and prevent a surge in COVID cases this winter, that is why public health officials urge individuals to get the updated booster.
“Finding an updated booster near you is easy. Find an updated booster near you at vaccines.gov. Appointments will also become available through myturn.ca.gov in the coming weeks.
“In California, COVID boosters are free of charge to consumers. We continue to encourage everyone to
- wear a well-fitted mask with good filtration when indoors in public settings
- Get tested if exposed to the virus or have symptoms such as runny nose, sore throat, sneezing, or coughing
- Improve ventilation indoors
- stay home when sick
as a reminder, and especially as we move into the fall.
“The best way to prevent serious illness and death is to be up to date on your COVID 19 and flu vaccines, and of course get the updated booster,” said Dr Chávez.
“The roll out of this new booster is quite timely as many models are predicting that we’re facing another COVID 19 surge this fall or winter, and we need to be ready,” said Dr Maggie Park.
“The bivalent vaccines were developed to trigger an immune response to the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 lineages and those are the viruses that are currently still causing the most COVID cases.
“BA.5 has been the predominant circulating variant since July and now accounts for about 87% of all newly diagnosed cases of COVID, with BA.4 pretty much accounting for the rest in San Joaquin County.
“The newest bivalent vaccines are built on the same technology of their proven predecessors, in fact, when it comes to bivalent vaccines, an earlier version of the bivalent vaccine that contained the BA.1 Omicron underwent a clinical trial in humans and showed that people did have either the same amount of side effects or perhaps even less, things like redness, swelling, pain at the side of injection.
“Another thing that we’re still hearing is that shots don’t work. People saying ‘my friend is fully vaccinated and boosted, but she still got COVID,’ and to that I say yes, but is she still alive and yes of course she is. We never promised that the vaccinations would mean you wouldn’t get COVID. We just said that it would reduce the severity of your disease and your chances for requiring hospitalization.
“Yes, the chance of getting COVID is also decreased with vaccination and all of this data is closely monitored by CDPH and posted on the state’s website,” said Dr Park.
Dr Oliver Brooks discussed the reasons for distrust and hesitancy about boosters and what messages are most effective in encouraging people in the communities, in his clinics, he serves to get boosted.
Speaking about the importance of vaccination, Dr Brooks said, “We’ve worldwide averted somewhere between 13 and 16 million deaths, so vaccination is important.”
How did it get developed so fast?
“My statement is, we needed to get it developed fast. We couldn’t wait three to five years, and it got developed fast because there were processes in place that worked. We did phase two and three studies, overlapping.
“We manufactured the vaccine prior to reaching FDA approval, if the vaccine didn’t work, they would have thrown out 600 million doses. The U.S. government was ready to do that.
“The platform to measure RNA platform has been around for 11 years or so it was developed when we had SARS-CoV-1, which a lot of people forget because it didn’t go pandemic, and then MERS which was a Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome which was similar, so we use that mRNA platform,” said Dr Brooks.
“When I talk to people that are hesitant, primarily right now, complacent, I’m not really worried about COVID 19. It is important to understand this is going to be here. It’s endemic. It’s going to be here this year, next year, for the future, as far as we see.
“We have engineered, within one year of COVID becoming a pandemic, a vaccine that is a biotechnological miracle. It’s averted up to 16 million deaths. It’s safe. It’s kind of innocuous, ‘little pain, swelling, a little fever, don’t feel good for two days,’ but I guarantee you COVID is worse than those things,” said Dr Brooks.
Next up was Dr Eva Smith, speaking from the Shinnecock Reservation in New York, currently working, and have been for 25 years, working on her husband’s reservation in California in the Hoopa Valley Reservation.
“When we first got the vaccine, the elders turned out. I was so impressed. They lined up, they wanted it, they didn’t want to die, they were watching on TV, what had happened in other native communities. With horrible death rates, this was a community that took a lot of leadership in the beginning.
“We went into lockdown mode in March 2020, and nobody was allowed to come in from the outside. They were very protective, and we didn’t have our first COVID case until July of 2020.
“There was a lot of hesitancy among younger people. Again, the elders were impressed, they turned out, they lined up, they wanted it, but the next middle age group was a little bit more forthright about coming forward, and then among the younger group, the seas of the confidence level, there was complacency and there was convenience, and we were really challenged of how to make this easily accessible,” said Dr Smith, outlining the challenges, steps, debunking and resolutions they had to take in order to keep everyone out of trouble.
Vaccines and boosters save lives. Please get yours as soon as they are available to you.
