The Kern County Public Health Department announced during Tuesday’s Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting, 119,935 vaccines have been distributed to Kern County. Of those vaccines 113,235 doses were administered to Kern County residents, and 105,116 residents have received their first dose. 

In addition to the current Kern County vaccine allotment, through new federal partnerships, Kern County will see an increase of available vaccines. As part of The Federal Pharmacy partnership, 15 Rite Aids and four CVS locations in Kern will be able to administer the vaccine. Each Rite Aid location will be able to administer 20 does per day, while each CVS location will be able to administer 100 doses per day. The Federally Qualified Healthcare Facility Partnerships between Clinica Sierra Vista and Omni, will launch in the next two weeks, with Clinica Sierra Vista launching first. The allocated vaccines to these two providers is unknown at this time, but the vaccines will not be from the Kern County allotment of vaccines. 

As educators, agriculture workers, and emergency service workers become eligible to become vaccinated, Leticia Perez-District 5, inquired how will Kern ensure that farmworkers who work all day — Monday through Saturday — will receive the vaccine. 

“In the expansion plan for the fairgrounds, we are talking about expanding to Sundays, especially since our vaccine deliveries happen on Tuesdays,” said Brynn Carrigan, the Director of Kern Public Health. 

Perez also stated, “Other vaccine locations that are in theory helping farmworkers, those have to be Sunday. . . We have to make the Sunday slot a priority.”  

Carrigan also announced as cases decrease from the winter surge, the State’s new guidelines for youth and adult recreational sports allows for moderate and high contact sports to occur outdoors in the red and purple tier if the adjusted case rate is 14 per 100,000 people or less. These new guidelines will be set to be in effect on February 26th, 2021. 

The current adjusted Case rate is 18.5 per 100,00 people. This is below the 25 per 100,000 case rate requirement for K-6th grade schools to open if the school did not open when Kern was previously in the red tier. These schools may now reopen within the next 3 weeks, even if the case rate exceeds the adjusted case rate of 25 per 100,000 people. Junior high and high schools may not reopen at this time, and must wait when the county enters the red tier to start in-person class.