Santa Barbara County lists essential workers who will receive vaccine in a few months
Phase 1A of the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccine is now underway.
Starting in December of 2020 and likely concluding by the start of February 2021, health care workers will all soon be vaccinated.
In addition, Phase 1B will most likely begin next month, targeting portions of the elderly and high-risk population, along with certain sectors of essential workers, homeless individuals and the incarcerated.
Phase 1B is predicted to be complete in mid-March.
Last week at a Zoom webinar, Santa Barbara County Public Health Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso said that she’s anticipating allowance from the state to concurrently run through the tiers in Phase 1B, just as they allowed for Phase 1A.
“This is anticipation on my part purely,” she said. “Locally, we will be guided by our epidemiological data with regards to outbreaks.
“We prioritize congregate living situations like incarcerated individuals, homeless shelters — they may be prioritized into Tier 1 of Phase 1B.”
She added that the Public Health Department will look at being able to do mass vaccination sometime in late March or early spring.
“We are building our infrastructure and bringing on additional vaccine providers,” Dr. Do-Reynoso said. “When we do mass vaccination, the opportunity to get vaccines will be widespread throughout the county.”
Following the completion of 1A and 1B, without a specific timeline at this time besides sometime in late March, individuals who fall into Phase 1C Tier 1 will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.
This includes persons ages 65 to 74, and persons ages 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions that place them at high risk for COVID-19.
Then, the last sector of essential workers will be vaccinated, including water and waste management workers, defense, energy, chemical and hazardous materials, communications and IT and financial services, along with government operations and community services.
Essential workers who fall into the water and wastewater include: operational staff at water authorities, community water systems, wastewater treatment facilities, water distribution and testing, wastewater collection facilities, operational staff and technical support for SCADA Control systems, workers repairing water and wastewater conveyances, chemical disinfectant suppliers and workers that maintain digital systems supporting water and wastewater operations.
Essential workers in the defense category include workers who support the essential services required to meet national security commitments to the federal government and U.S. Military. This includes: space and aerospace workers, nuclear matters workers, mechanical and software engineers, manufacturing and production workers, IT support, security staff, security personnel, intelligence support, aircraft and weapon system mechanics and maintainers and sanitary workers who maintain the hygienic viability of necessary facilities. In addition, essential workers include personnel working for companies, their subcontractors under the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy on nuclear matters, personnel at government-owned/contractor operated facilities, and those who provide materials and services to the DoD and DoE, such as weapon systems, software and cybersecurity, communications and surveillance.
Energy workers supporting the energy sector, regardless of the source, segment or infrastructure, or who are needed to monitor, operate, engineer, and maintain the reliability, safety, environmental health, physical and cybersecurity of the energy system, including power generation, transmission and distribution are also included in Phase 1C Tier 1. This also includes workers in construction, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, maintenance and permitting.
IT and OT are included as well, such as support workers, customer service operations, call centers, and emergency response and customer emergency operations; energy management systems, control systems, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, and energy sector entity data centers; cybersecurity engineers; and cybersecurity risk management.
Workers supporting the procurement, mining, drilling, processing, refining, manufacturing, refueling, construction, logistics, transportation (including marine transport, terminals, rail and vehicle transport), permitting operation and maintenance, security, waste disposal, storage, and monitoring of support for resources; workers supporting environmental remediation and monitoring; and workers supporting manufacturing and distribution of equipment, supplies, and parts necessary to maintain production, maintenance, restoration, and service at energy sector facilities across all energy sectors, and regardless of the energy source are part of Phase 1C Tier 1.
Finally, workers at Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations and Network Operations staff, engineers and technicians; workers at Reliability Coordinator, Balancing Authorities and primary backup Control Centers, mutual assistance personnel and retail fuel centers and the distribution systems that support them are eligible for a vaccine in Phase 1C Tier 1.
The chemical and hazardous materials sector has five main segments: basic chemicals, specialty chemicals, agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals and consumer products.
This includes workers who transport basic raw chemical materials; workers supporting the safe transportation of chemicals; workers supporting production of protective cleaning and medical solutions; plant contract workers who provide inspections; workers supporting the production and transportation of chlorine and alkali manufacturing; workers at nuclear facilities; workers who support hazardous materials response and cleanup; workers who maintain digital systems supporting the operations; and workers who support the removal, storage and disposal of waste, including landfill and recycling operations.
Essential communications workers who will be eligible for the vaccine in Phase 1C Tier 1 include maintenance workers of communications infrastructure and equipment; workers at cable landing sites, beach manhole vaults and covers, submarine cable depots and submarine cable ship facilities; government and private sector employees supporting DoD internet and communications; front line news reporters, studio and technicians for newsgathering, reporting and publishing news; Network Operations Staff; contractors for construction and engineering of fiber optic cables, buried conduit, small cells and other wireless facilities; installation, maintenance and repair technicians; central office personnel; customer service and support staff; workers providing electronic security; dispatchers; retail customer service; External Affairs personnel; and workers responsible for ensuring persons with disabilities have access to communication platforms.
The IT sector includes Network Operations Command Centers, Broadcast Operations Control Center and Security Operations Command Centers; data center operators; workers who support client service centers, field engineers and others supporting critical infrastructure; workers needed to pre-empt and respond to cyber incidents; suppliers, designers and transporters supporting infrastructure for computing services; workers supporting work from home solutions; and employees required to support software as a service businesses that enable remote working.
Financial services are also considered essential in Phase 1C Tier 1. The essential workforce includes workers needed to process financial transactions and services; workers who maintain orderly market operations; workers providing business, commercial and consumer access to banking and non-bank financial and lending services; workers supporting financial operations; workers supporting production and distribution of debit and credit cards; and workers providing electronic point of sale support personnel for essential workers.
Finally, workers supporting government operations and other community-based essential functions will receive their vaccines. This includes: critical government workers; county workers determining safety net benefit eligibility; the courts; workers supporting unemployment insurance programs, income maintenance, employment service, disaster assistance and other benefit programs; workers ensuring continuity of building functions; elections personnel; Federal, State, and Local, Tribal, and Territorial employees who support Mission Essential Functions and communications networks; trade officials; weather forecasters; workers maintaining digital infrastructure; workers who support necessary credentialing, vetting and licensing operations for critical sector workers and operations; workers supporting emergency response supply chain at all levels; and workers supporting public and private childcare establishments, pre-K establishments, K-12 schools, colleges and universities for purposes of distance learning, provision of school meals, or care, supervision and instruction of minors.
Also included in this category is staff at government offices; workers and instructors supporting academies and training facilities; clergy for essential support and faith-based services provided following COVID-19 guidance; human service providers, especially for at-risk populations; and government entities and contractors supporting local, state and federal public health and medical mission sets.
Phase 2 and 3 will obviously follow Phase 1C Tier 1, and will include all other persons 16 years or older who have not already been recommended for vaccination and, after that, all others who have not been vaccinated.
Visit https://publichealthsbc.org/vaccine/ for the rollout schedule, or https://covid19.ca.gov/essential-workforce/ to review the essential workforce list.
email: gmccormick@newspress.com
