Virtual town halls present latest COVID vaccine info Written by Megan V. Winslow
Thanks to Santa Clara County’s “No Wrong Door” policy, all residents ages 65 and older and frontline health-care personnel are now eligible for free COVID-19 vaccinations at most county vaccination sites, regardless of their regular health-care provider.
Last week, Supervisor Joe Simitian hosted a panel of local health-care experts participating in the first of six virtual town hall forums designed to keep residents abreast of vaccination sites, eligibility and methods for making appointments, which are required.
Approximately 310,000 Santa Clara County residents are ages 65 and older, and as of Feb. 10, the date of the Los Altos/Los Altos Hills town hall, approximately 34% of them had been vaccinated, said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, COVID-19 testing and vaccine officer for the county.
County Public Defender Brett Hammond got the shot.
“I’m thrilled,” he said. “My mom lives ten minutes away and I have not been able to hug her for a year. So I can reunite with my family, but I don’t think it should have to come down to being alerted at 4 p.m. on a Saturday that there are extra doses. I think public defenders should get it because they have so much exposure.”
The county said that because of an increase in people not showing up to their COVID vaccine appointments it had the extra doses, so it reached out to the public and asked county workers to come get a vaccine so they wouldn’t go to waste.
It paid off. Brett Hammond, a county public defender, said just 20 minutes after arriving at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, he got a vaccine.
“I’m thrilled,” he said. “My mom lives 10 minutes from me and I have not been able to hug her for a year. So I can reunite with my family. But I don’t think it should have taken being alerted at 4 p.m. on a Saturday that there are extra doses. I think public defenders should get it because they have so much exposure.”
He and other county employees who are not age 65 and older and not healthcare workers in the currently eligible tier received vaccines.
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