What Vaccinations Do Food Service Workers Need

The nighttime rooms no longer smell like rich compost. Gone are the tall shelves that once held trays of thousands of tiny fungi. The floors are swept make clean, before long to hold chairs and tables.

Monterey Mushrooms, the nation's largest mushroom farm, is ready to open its on-site vaccination clinic. All that's missing are vaccines.

"Nosotros're good to get," said Shah Kazemi, owner of the company that aims to protect its own 1,200 workers every bit well every bit field workers, packers and processors from the region's other farms. "This is a public health crunch."

WATSONVILLE, CA – February 4: Monterey Mushrooms owner Shah Kazemi is photographed in an empty building used to abound mushrooms on Thursday, February. 4, 2021, in Watsonville, Calif. Kazemi hopes to use empty mushroom growing rooms every bit COVID-xix vaccination sites for his employees besides as field workers, packers, and processors from the region's other farms. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Grouping)

Frustrated, food and agricultural businesses — whose 3.4 1000000 high-risk "essential workers" thought they were near the front of the line to receive a vaccine, correct after medical workers and people in nursing homes — at present don't know when information technology'll be their plough.

With hospitals dangerously total, California has recommended that counties broaden their top priority groups to include older adults, hoping to lessen the burden and reduce deaths. On Midweek, a coalition of Bay Area health officers urged all wellness systems to prioritize vaccines for people 65 and older, a group at greatest take chances of dying, and move essential workers such as farm workers farther down the list.

So the low-income, largely Latino workforce is waiting.

"Farmworkers are small fry," said San Jose physician Dr. Walter Newman, who is ready to deploy 200 volunteer medical and nursing students from Stanford and San Jose State University to vaccinate farmworkers at Monterey Mushrooms and other rural sites in Monterey, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

WATSONVILLE, CA – February 4: A farm workers selection crops in a field along Due west Beach Street on Thursday, February. 4, 2021, in Watsonville, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

What'due south needed, he insists, is an official "carve out" of vaccine supplies for food and agricultural workers.

"Unfortunately, as the state's priorities have shifted, and then to has our position in who gets the vaccine adjacent," said Ken Christopher, a third-generation grower at Gilroy's Christopher Ranch, America's largest producer of fresh garlic. "The state and county seems to be prioritizing age over essential workers."

Like Monterey Mushrooms, the 60-year-one-time garlic visitor seeks to partner with the county to offer on-site vaccinations to its 1,000 employees.

"It's critical that farm workers get moved to the front of the line for vaccines as quickly equally possible," Christopher said.

Working in shut quarters and crowded housing, often carpooling to work, these workers are at elevated take a chance, according to recent research. A UC San Francisco study found that COVID-19 deaths among California Latinos were 36% college than among the average state population — with a 59% increase among Latinos who were food/agriculture workers.

WATSONVILLE, CA – Feb iv: Monterey Mushrooms employees piece of work in a packing facility on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021, in Watsonville, Calif. The company hopes to use empty mushroom growing rooms as COVID-xix vaccination sites for employees as well as field workers, packers, and processors from the region'south other farms. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

But they're caught in a war of mixed messages between state and canton governments.

According to Dr. Marker Ghaly, California Health and Human Services Secretarial assistant, deciding whom to vaccinate in this current distribution system, Phase 1B Tier ane, is up to each county.

"Counties have the option to vaccinate individuals in the food and ag industry, on those essential frontlines, who are keeping food in stores and on tables," he said at a recent printing briefing.

Simply counties say they've been told to vaccinate only those individuals who are older than 65, said Dr. Jeff Smith, Santa Clara Canton executive. "We're still functioning under the conventionalities that we have to finish the 65 and older group before nosotros move on to others."

Counties add that they now don't accept enough vaccines to widen distribution. "No appointment certain correct at present," said Monterey Canton's Karen Smith. "It depends on supply."

An estimated 23 million doses are required to fully protect all xi.five million people in Phase 1A and 1B categories, said Dr. Erica Pan, country epidemiologist with the California Department of Public Health. Simply the state has received fewer than 7 1000000 doses, according to data from the CDPH.

Only a few counties, such equally Riverside and Fresno, have begun official programs to protect food and agriculture workers.

"At the local level, many counties take not yet triggered the 'subcontract worker' category for prioritization. That'due south been incredibly limiting," said Diana Tellefson Torres of the United Farm Workers Foundation, which is working to help design mobile vaccination clinics where farm workers live and work.

"We want to make sure that they're prioritized not but in writing, but on the basis – out in the field, in the packing houses," she said.

To assistance fill the gap, some local hospitals are hosting spontaneous 'pop up' clinics, using their own vaccine supplies. In Watsonville this week, a clinic hosted by Nobility Health Dominican Hospital, the Farm Agency and the California Strawberry Commission vaccinated ane,000 Santa Cruz County agricultural workers, co-ordinate to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

California's agricultural sector is the most important in the United States, leading the nation's production in over 77 dissimilar products including dairy and a number of fruit and vegetable specialty crops. Combined with food processing, it is the 2nd largest economic sector behind computers and electronics.

This month, Tulare County workers are busy picking navel oranges, lemons and tangelo mandarins. In Fresno Canton, they're weeding wheat fields, pruning fruit copse and repairing baste lines. Monterey County'south strawberries, which thrive in the region's cool and sandy soil, volition soon be set up for harvesting.

Food and agricultural workers are among the most challenging people to reach during the nation's largest mass vaccination campaign, say experts.

More than than three-quarters don't accept insurance. More than 10% have never seen a doctor, according to a recent survey by the United Farm Workers Foundation. They may be mistrustful; according to the Heart for Farmworker Families, 70% of the workers planting and harvesting crops in California are undocumented. They may live in i canton and piece of work in some other. Some are migratory, following the harvest season.

Many do not speak English or may be computer illiterate, so they tin can't schedule online appointments. And they don't have the time or schedule flexibility to travel to a vaccination site.

"They're working six, sometimes seven days a week," said Torres. "They're working long hours. Many don't have a vehicle."

Monterey Mushrooms says its solution is simple, straightforward and eases the county's organizational burden. It has xiv empty mushroom growing rooms in its idled facility. At that place'due south enough of parking. It volition provide staffers to aid with registration, to back up Dr. Newman and his team.

"These are the people who put food on our tables," said Kazemi. "Nosotros just need the vaccines."