Xavier Becerra urges parents to vaccinate children against COVID during California visit
The United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the coronavirus in a visit to Chico, California, this week.
The former California attorney general said, respecting California guardians’ ability to make the best medical decision for their children, that the science is clear: Vaccines work.
Becerra, who left his position of attorney general to join the Biden administration, visited California early on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mental health listening tour. He talked with local leaders on a days-long trip from Southern to Northern California about topics adjacent to mental wellness, including homelessness, addiction, abortion access and the coronavirus pandemic.
In Chico, which is part of Butte County, Becerra left a clear message: “If you’re dying of COVID, I can almost guarantee you, you did not get vaccinated.”
“If you’re hospitalized with a severe condition because of COVID, I can bet and win that bet nine out of 10 times that you did not get vaccinated,” Becerra said, as he compelled local pediatricians and family medicine doctors to get parents to vaccinate children.
Becerra said the administration was working on making vaccines eligible for all children. Currently, only children over the age of five are eligible for vaccination.
There are about 28 million children between the ages of five and 11 in the U.S. About 2 million of those children had tested positive for COVID-19 before January 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 8,300 of those children have been hospitalized and nearly 100 have died from COVID-19 as of October 2021, putting the virus as one of the top 10 causes of death for children between the ages of five and 11, per the CDC.
And between April 2020 and October 2021, there have been more than 2,300 cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome — a condition connected to COVID-19 in which different parts of the body, like the heart or brain, become inflamed — in children in that age group.
Butte County has among the lowest vaccination rates of eligible residents in any county in California, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard. About 54% of people ages five and older there have been fully vaccinated. The boosted rate in Butte is better than many counties, however: Almost 57% of those people have also gotten a booster shot.
Lassen, Modoc and Mariposa counties are the three counties with the lowest percent of people vaccinated against COVID-19. Less than 31% of the eligible population in Lassen County are vaccinated.
Mariposa, Merced and Alpine counties are the three counties that have the lowest percent of people boosted.
Still, California is ahead of the curve when it comes to vaccination rates: More than 74% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated and 57% of the population is boosted.
Nationally, less than 70% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated and 44% of those people are boosted, according to the CDC.
Becerra’s push comes as cases of the coronavirus trend downward and state and federal protocols on social distancing and mask-wearing soften. Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his “SMARTER” plan to dealing with the pandemic in February, marking California as the first state in the nation to announce an “endemic” response.
Newsom has held onto California’s state of emergency, to state Republicans’ chagrin, while lifting several of his COVID-19 response orders. Orders and provisions remaining relate to COVID-19 testing, vaccine and booster distribution and hospital capacity, Newsom’s office said in a release.
People who have been vaccinated and boosted have consistently been less likely to contract or be hospitalized with COVID-19 in a series of CDC studies.
The CDC’s most recent rates — as of January 8, 2022, during the Omicron variant wave — show incidences of infection were 3.6 times higher and hospitalizations were 23 times higher for people who were not vaccinated compared to people who were fully vaccinated with a booster. Incidences of infection were 2 times greater and hospitalizations were 5.3 times greater for people who were not vaccinated compared to people who were fully vaccinated without a booster.
More than 963,000 people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus, according to the CDC, as of March 16, 2022. Almost 87,000 of them were from California.
The Bee’s Lindsey Holden contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
