Santa Barbara County launches trio of COVID vaccine clinics — including 1 in Santa Maria
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department will be holding three mass COVID-19 vaccination clinics in the coming weeks, starting with one in Lompoc.
The first clinic will be held at the Dick DeWees Community and Senior Center in Lompoc, located at 1120 Ocean Avenue, with the first appointments available on Sunday.
Vaccine appointments will be available to all eligible groups, including those over the age of 65, phase 1A health care workers, education and childcare workers, emergency service workers, food and agriculture workers, and those between the ages of 16 and 64 with high-risk medical conditions.
Starting April 1, California residents age 50 and older will be able to book appointments at any participating pharmacy, hospital, clinic or other vaccine provider across the state.
And all Californians ages 16 and up will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations starting April 15, the state announced Thursday.
“With more people now eligible to be vaccinated, and more vaccines available, we are even closer to ending the pandemic in our community,” said Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso. “With the risk of severe illness and death for people over the age of 65, as well as people with high-risk medical conditions, we are happy to be able to vaccinate community members in these groups.”
“We welcome all eligible community members to be vaccinated, and in particular offer a warm welcome to our mid-county residents looking to be vaccinated.”
Eligible county residents can sign up for a vaccine appointment at the Lompoc clinic by registering at the Public Health website or by calling 2-1-1 and pressing option 4 for assistance.
After a week in Lompoc, the clinic will move to Santa Maria beginning Monday, April 5, where it will operate for seven days before moving to Santa Barbara on Monday, April 12. The Santa Barbara clinic will be open for five days.
The three clinics will only be administering first-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the county’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center.
These vaccination sites are expected to each distribute several thousand doses as a result of increased allocations to the county through the Health Center COVID-19 Vaccine Program.
The program is part of a partnership between the Health Resources and Services Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has begun increasing vaccine supplies at select HRSA-funded health centers, including the Santa Barbara County Health Care Centers.
The Public Health Department administered 3,376 vaccines last week through its vaccination sites, and expects to deliver 9,450 doses through increased vaccination clinics in Lompoc, the Joint Information Center said in a statement. Overall, vaccine providers in the county administered 19,610 doses for the week ending March 16, according to county reports.
Vaccine appointments for eligible community members remain available at local pharmacies, hospitals, occupation-specific clinics run by the county, and other health care providers.
As of March 21, the county has administered 142,441 doses of the vaccine into the arms of county residents and 11% of the county’s population is fully vaccinated, according to the county’s Community Data Dashboard. That includes people who have received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, and people who have received one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.