School employees could soon have access to multiple locations for receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot as Orange County begins to inoculate its education sector.
A vaccination site that, for now, is serving educators 65 years or older is expected to reopen for appointments in the Garden Grove Unified district on Wednesday, Feb. 24, as shipments of doses delayed by the recent winter storms across the country begin to arrive.
Next, the Orange County Department of Education is planning to roll out several more vaccination pods (points of dispensing) on school properties throughout the county over the next several weeks, department spokesman Ian Hanigan said.
In a collaboration with the OC Health Care Agency, the county education department is targeting districts and areas such as Capistrano Unified, Saddleback Valley Unified, Santa Ana Unified, Anaheim and Orange Unified as potential destinations for the pods to spread them around the county, Hanigan said. They will be open to public and private school employees.
The sites will likely become operational under a staggered timeline as increasing supplies of vaccine become available, he said, adding that Capistrano Unified could be the next to open a location as early as Monday, March 1.
The county department hopes to have seven school-based vaccination sites available by mid-April, with each pod providing about 350 vaccines per day, Hanigan said, cautioning “assuming supplies are sufficient.”
“It’s a massive undertaking,” he said. “In terms of logistics and supplies and staffing, this is certainly beyond anything we’ve ever done before as a county office.”
There are about 150,000 people working in education in the kindergarten through 12th grade level in Orange County, according to the department’s information. Hanigan said school employees for those levels, along with those from higher education, are among the department’s top priorities to vaccinate.
The department has hired an additional 150 nurses to assist with the campaign.
The Garden Grove pod, the county’s first specifically for the education sector, opened on Feb. 18, but the efforts paused after one day and about 200 doses administered because of the supply issues created by the winter storms.
The location started off focusing on school employees 65-and-older, and is expected to administer vaccines to about 1,000, Hanigan said. But starting next week, the vaccine will likely be available to “all school-based employees” in the county, not just those who are older, he said. Orange County is now expanding eligibility for vaccination to those in education, childcare and food and agriculture sectors.
Receiving a vaccine at any of the pods planned will require an appointment; there will be no walk-ups taken. Appointments are expected to be available outside the normal working hours for schools, including weekends.
“It all comes down to supply,” Hanigan said. “School-based employees will be able to receive vaccinations at any location as long as they have an appointment.”
Appointments will be made through county’s Othena app or website, but teachers and staff may also receive the vaccine from their health care provider, at one of the other mass distribution centers run by the county or other sources. School employees will be asked for a current paycheck stub and valid driver’s license or state-issued identification.
“It’s kind of whichever boat is fastest to get there,” Hanigan said of the potential routes to being vaccinated. “If they’ve got a beat on a vaccine through another provider – their doctor, CVS Pharmacy, Rite Aid – they’re certainly welcome to do that.”
The county won’t prioritize immunization based on whether teachers are providing in-person instruction or are teaching remotely, Hanigan said.
Dr. Clayton Chau, director of the OC Health Care Agency, said on Friday, Feb. 19, that the county will begin to allocate a third of new coronavirus vaccine shipments to the education, child care and food and agriculture sectors.
Teachers, union presidents and school board members had publicly called last week for swifter action in vaccinating educators, noting that they’ve watched as peers in some nearby counties already receive shots.
“There’s also that push from not only Gov. (Gavin Newsom), but the federal level, to have us open up (schools) as soon as possible,” Lisa Hickman, president of the Tustin Educators Association, said last week. “We’d love to be opened up. We just want to make sure it’s a safe as possible, and that includes making sure we’re vaccinated.”
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