Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXVI): Teachers in rural California district among first to get vaccine

EdSource reports from Mariposa County, where vaccinations of teachers and school staff began yesterday.  Diana Lambert reports 

Teachers and school employees in Mariposa County are expected to be among the first of California’s 1.4 million teachers and other school staff to be vaccinated for Covid-19 when they roll up their sleeves for the shot on Monday. 

Half of the rural county’s school staff, 146 people so far, have signed up for the vaccination, said Mariposa County Health Officer Eric Sergienko. A team of nurses will travel from school to school to vaccinate those who have registered to receive the immunization.

All 15 schools in the county of 17,000 residents in the Sierra Nevada foothills have been back to in-person instruction since October. Although the county is in the red tier, which signifies a substantial Covid-19 infection rate, it is one of only four California counties that is not in the purple tier, the most restrictive status due to widespread infection rates.

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Mariposa County is able to move on to vaccinating teachers and others in Phase 1B because it has nearly completed vaccinating medical staff, who are in Phase 1A. Larger counties like Los Angeles are likely to take longer to begin vaccinating school staff because they still have many health care providers to vaccinate. Los Angeles County predicts it will be able to begin Phase 1B in early February.

I guess there's something to be said for rural agility.  A May story out of Mariposa County, which also put the sparsely populated county on the cutting edge, is here.