Contra Costa County ready for childhood vaccinations

CONCORD, California (KRON) – Contra Costa County already has more than 400 planned COVID-19 vaccine appointments for children at three of its public health clinics on Friday.

County health officials said they are ready to meet demand.

There are 92,000 residents in Contra Costa County who are between five and 11 years old. So far, the county has received about 20,000 doses of Pfizer’s pediatric vaccine.

As of Friday, the vaccines are being offered to children at county health vaccination clinics in Antioch, Richmond and Concord.

It has been known that children are less prone to the worst case when it comes to the virus.

But pediatricians agree that children should be vaccinated to reduce the spread of COVID to others.

“COVID does not care about your beliefs, does not care about your socioeconomic status, does not care about your skin color or your religion. It is simply a virus that wants to enter a person’s body and replicate,” said Kaiser pediatrician Dr. Rahul Parikh .

The pediatric dose is one third of the dose given to adolescents and adults.

However, children should still be given two shots at least three weeks apart.

The heath department collaborates with local schools to set up campus vaccination clinics.

Officials expect to begin this process next week.

You can book an appointment online, or you can call the county health service. Officials say you do not even have to be a resident of Contra Costa County to get the dose.

But you need to have time to get the vaccine – because they will not accept walk-ins.