With California expanding COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to everyone age 16 and over starting Thursday, April 15, public health officials in Orange County are planning a new array of pop-up vaccination sites for certain harder-to-reach groups that, for various reasons, might be left behind as the immunization campaign shifts into an even higher gear.

At this stage, public and private administrators have pieced together a grid of coronavirus vaccination sites that range from large health care providers and county-run super PODs – points-of-dispensing that offer thousands of slots per day – to pharmacy chains and small-scale neighborhoods clinics.

With that infrastructure in place, the OC Health Care Agency can focus on redeploying its mobile PODs to accommodate communities of all ages who might avoid larger centers, such as transgender people or people with autism, as well as people with vision and hearing impairments, said Dr. Clayton Chau, the agency’s director and the county’s health officer.

“I believe that the public health role is to be creative and find ways to find solutions to take care of those folks, from a vaccine perspective,” Chau said.

Mobile PODs have been in use for months to hone in on specific communities – especially seniors in hard-hit neighborhoods – when eligibility was more limited by age and occupation. Now there is more flexibility in their use with the expanded eligibility.

On Sunday, the Health Care Agency partnered with Santa Ana-based Alianza TransLatinx to invite the LGBTQ community to a pop-up clinic that was also open to other community members. About 250 people made appointments for the mobile POD at a health agency facility on 17th Street in Santa Ana.

Khloe Rios-Wyatt, Alianza TransLatinx’s chief executive, said some transgender residents are undocumented, don’t have insurance or just need more information to make a decision about the vaccine.

“When it comes to the vaccine, we’ve noticed that the transgender community still has a lot of fear of getting vaccinated,” Rios-Wyatt said.

Rios-Wyatt, a transgender woman who grew up in Orange County, said some of her peers already face discrimination and may not feel comfortable going to a mass vaccination site.

Knowing, “OK, there’s going to be a space just for me” helped persuade some people to show up Sunday, she said.

Vaccinators can provide all the facts and data in the world, but for some people, seeing someone they know and trust getting their shot can be the decider, said Jennifer S. Wang, chief operating officer for the Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center. The organization also helped coordinate the Sunday clinic.

Wang said one of her group’s strategies to reach vaccine-hesitant people has been to offer shots to some of their volunteers, who then tell their friends and neighbors.

Some seniors “just had to see it – they saw their friends coming back to the apartments with a vaccination card,” and then felt comfortable doing it themselves, she said.

Seeking out vulnerable populations already has helped make Orange County’s vaccination strategy a success, said Margaret Bredehoft, the Health Care Agency’s deputy director of Public Health Services.

A lack of information about vaccines may make some people reluctant to get the shot, and in other cases people may face cultural, social or personal barriers, Bredehoft said. But others who aren’t aware of those factors might question why mass vaccination sites aren’t a good fit for everyone.

“I think the key is to help them understand the challenges of the different communities we serve,” she said.

Chau also suggested mobile PODs to make vaccination more convenient for Orange County’s Muslim population during Ramadan, the holy month that began Monday and includes the breaking of daytime fasting with a nightly communal “iftar” meal.

The Health Care Agency already has been in contact with local Muslim organizations to launch mobile PODs at local mosques to coincide with evening prayers during Ramadan, said Masih Fouladi, deputy executive director of the region’s Council on American-Islamic Relations office in Anaheim.

Though observant Muslims abstain from eating and drinking until sunset, religious leaders have advised Muslims to get vaccinated regardless of time of day, Fouladi said. “Whether it happens before or after sunset doesn’t matter from a religious standpoint.”

Having walk-up vaccines available right after an evening prayer would not only be convenient, he said, but would also help those who are older or less tech savvy who haven’t yet figured out Othena, My Turn or other appointment scheduling systems.

“When a family comes to pray together, they can also get vaccinated together,” Fouladi said. “I think our mosques, our community as a whole, wants to get back to the point where we can congregate in a safe manner.”

Similar pop-up clinics have also been set up at churches to signal that faith leaders endorsed the shots.

Going forward, Chau said he sees the county’s role as a mass vaccinator shifting: Super PODs eventually will be phased out as traditional health care systems – expected to soon be flush with abundant vaccine supplies – start to make up the difference. Mobile PODs, with the help of community organizations, will continue to parachute in services for specific groups.

“We probably will scale down the super PODs at the end of May or early June, (but) that is contingent upon us getting a lot of vaccine in this next month and a half to meet that demand,” Chau said.

More than three-quarters of Orange County’s seniors – who were prioritized for shots because they are most likely to have a serious or fatal case of COVID-19 – have now been vaccinated, Chau said. Some 700,000 people in Orange County have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus since shots began in mid-December, state Department of Public Health data shows.

But more work must be done for other vulnerable and disproportionately impacted groups, Chau said.

“We still need to put more effort into our Latinx community,” he said, “and obviously folks who are poor of any ethnic group – we want to make sure they have access to it.”

Open to all

Starting Thursday, April 15, anyone 16 and older will be eligible for a vaccine throughout California (there are some counties that were able to expand eligibility to all earlier).

Here’s what to know:

• The Othena app and website (www.othena.com) schedules appointments for county-run sites in Anaheim, Aliso Viejo and Costa Mesa and some smaller or mobile sites. You can also use the state’s My Turn website (www.myturn.ca.gov), check with your medical provider, or try a local pharmacy (CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens are among those with federal contracts to give shots).
• If you already registered with Othena or My Turn, you don’t have to do it again. They will send notifications inviting people in the order they registered to schedule an appointment once they’re eligible and a vaccine dose is available for them.
• There’s no out-of-pocket cost for vaccination, though you may be asked for health insurance information if you have coverage.

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