California health officials urge everyone to get COVID vaccine when it’s their turn
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Santa Barbara County is moving through the early tiers of the vaccination roll out. Many frontline healthcare workers have received their first and second doses. The county is now moving to other healthcare workers.
As of Tuesday 1,525,816 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in California. And California Department of Public Health’s director, Dr. Tomas Aragón, said everyone needs to be vaccinated.
“We’re choosing the path of vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate,” said Dr. Aragón. “That’s going to be the safety way to develop community immunity.”
“Eventually the way pandemics start ending is that it starts running out of susceptible persons in the populations,” continued Aragón. “And that happens when people become immune in general. And there’s only two ways to immunity. One way is through natural selection, the other way is through vaccination. The problem with going through natural infection is that a lot of people become sick, hospitalized and die. And some people are having long-term sequelae from their infection.”
Dr. Aragón urges people to remain in just their households, staying home as much as possible, avoiding traveling, washing hands regularly, wearing a mask when outside and getting the vaccine when it’s their turn.
