MODESTO, Calif. — Stanislaus County’s walk-in model for coronavirus vaccinations is about as simple as they come: show up to the clinic, wait in line and get your vaccine. To that tune, the county has vaccinated more than 38,000 people with their four mass clinics.
“I think it has been successful so far. We pretty much run out of all the doses we have allocated for each day,” said Kamlesh Kaur, Stanislaus County Public Health spokesperson. “Even on the days where we post online that there is no line, on those days as well, we are able to fulfill or administer all the vaccines that we have allocated for that site on that day.”
Occasionally, the county will use the StanEmergency Facebook page to spread the word about there being no wait times for vaccines at their mass clinics. Kaur said that, even with the lack of lines, the vaccines found their way into people’s arms, either by way of people showing up after the normal workday or through closed PODs (Points of Distribution).
“(Wednesday), even though we didn’t have lines at our Stan State site, probably around mid-day, we still ran out of all of our doses at the end of the day at the extended closed POD clinic at Stan State which ended at 7 p.m.,” Kaur said.
At least 64,000 vaccinations have been done in the county, as of Wednesday, through efforts from the county, large hospitals and various providers like Golden Valley Health Center (GVHC), she said.
In contrast to what the county’s doing, GVHC is taking an appointment-based approach with their patients. Yamilet Valladolid, Government and Community Affairs Manager for GVHC, said this kind of variety with accessibility is key to getting vaccines in arms.
“It is extremely crucial to ensure we have walk-in clinics, mobile clinics, appointment clinics via phone, via electronically,” Valladolid said. “Why? Because this ensures that people do have access.”
She said those options are needed because some people might have jobs where appointments work better for them and other people might have more fluid schedules which makes a walk-in model more convenient.
“I feel that different people have different time and resources and support when it comes to health appointments, so it’s really important that we cover everyone whether it's via an appointment, whether it's via a walk-in clinic, whether it's mobile clinics in different neighborhoods…,” Valladolid explained.
Upping that accessibility factor for the county, Kaur said Stanislaus State University will be open March 6 to offer the vaccine to more people whose job might keep them from getting it during the weekdays.
Stanislaus County will also be having another mobile clinic in Grayson, near Patterson. It follows a bumpy start with their pilot mobile clinic in West Modesto that saw only 84 out of 200 vaccines administered and two highly successful mobile clinics in Riverbank and Newman.
In contrast to the West Modesto clinic, both events in Riverbank and Newman cleared out 300 vaccines in two days.
“There were quite a lot of lessons learned from the King-Kennedy Center as well and that is something that we wanted to do as well – to see what could work with our mobile clinic the way we are setting it up,” Kaur said.
Some of the lessons include moving the clinic hours to later in the day and getting the message out to the community in a stronger fashion. However, one other key difference between the West Modesto clinic and the Riverbank and Newman efforts was a partnership with GVHC.
“I can tell you that the clinics filled up really quickly because we were able to reach out to those patients in need,” Valladolid said.
GVHC went as far as sorting their 65 and older patients by ZIP code to let them know about the upcoming clinics in those areas, and they reached out to them directly in any way they could. Valladolid said building trust and reaching out to the hard-to-reach communities are all part of what they do, and those collaborations with public health are important to have.
“These collaborations are really critical and important because community health centers such as GVHC, we have the trust from the community, the reach and the tools necessary to be able to reach out to the residents…,” she said.
Stanislaus County will be making another effort with a mobile clinic in Grayson on March 5 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 8900 Laird Street, the United Community Center and Park. It’s open to people in Phase 1A, seniors, and people over 50 in education, food and agriculture, and emergency services. Proof of age, residents and employment will be verified.
For more information on vaccines, vaccinations, and testing in Stanislaus County, click HERE or visit the StanEmergency Facebook page.
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