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Booster, pediatric vaccination in Contra Costa in steady progress

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Contra Costa County’s progress on the pandemic fight continued amid the gradual increase of cases in other areas in the country as holidays near.

Despite this, county health services director Anna Roth on Tuesday made a warning, KPIX reported.

“We have seen that progress slow in the last few days and we are starting to see some stabilization and even just a little rise in our hospital numbers,” Roth said. “Again, though, I want to talk about the progress.”

“We’re seeing lots of the progress we’re having because so many of our residents are choosing to get vaccinated, both for the first time and with booster doses.”

The health services director noted that over 500 residents in the county are receiving their first vaccine dose. Booster shots were also administered to 53 percent of qualified elderly while the first dose was also given to 26 percent of 5 to 11-year-old children in the county.

The county also saw a decrease in its case rates.

“Cases per 100,000 are at 6.7, compared to a month ago they were 8.8, so we’ve had a 24 percent decrease,” Roth said. “One month ago, we had 53 people in the hospital with COVID; today we have 33. So we’ve seen a decrease — only 8 of those people are in the (intensive care unit). And those kinds of numbers are comparable to last spring, which was before the Delta surge.”

Over the past 15 days, she said Contra Costa has given over 95, 000 vaccine doses. Of the number, 23, 000 were given to eligible children.

“Overall, we’ve administered more than 1.9 million doses here in Contra Costa County,” she said.

Seventy-five percent of Contra Costa’s Latin population got their first shot as of this week. The rate is about the same as their White counterparts.

“So we still have some work to do,” she said. “Our equity team is still very much out in the field and working diligently.”

Contra Costa continued to move towards its target to remove indoor masking mandates, according to deputy health officer Dr. Sofe Mekuria, when 80 percent of the population completed their vaccine. At present, the county achieved 74.2 percent of fully vaccinated residents.

“If all 74,000 people who are now partially vaccinated get their follow up doses in the next few weeks, we’d easily meet the goal of our 80 percent of individuals fully vaccinated to lift the indoor masking order,” Mekuria said.