Health officials implore COVID-19 vaccine line jumpers to wait their turn • Long Beach Post News lbpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lbpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The Long Beach Health Department has already allowed them to book roughly 1,000 appointments for the vaccine, putting them in a rare class of professions like teachers, firefighters and health care workers with access to the shots.
According to the state’s prioritization schedule, dockworkers don’t appear to be eligible; they are specifically named under the “transportation and logistics,” and no eligibility date has been set for this group and many others as supplies of the vaccine remain scarce.
Long Beach, however, got around that by classifying dockworkers at the local seaports as “food workers,” officials said Monday. Food workers, including grocery clerks and farm laborers, became eligible under state criteria about a month ago at the same time as teachers.
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One of the reasons for the inequity is that fact that people over 65 have been prioritized because they are more likely to fall ill and die from the virus, even though they contract COVID at lower rates. And in Long Beach, residents on the east side tend to be White and older.
Frontline health workers, police and firefighters were in the first eligible groups, followed by those over 65. Newly eligible groups are teachers and food workers.
Demographic information on vaccination rates, presented Tuesday during a City Council meeting, mirrors what’s happening elsewhere in the country.
Health officials are struggling to reach communities of color and densely populated areas where the virus has been most rampant.