Sixteen-year old Patricia Kalb is ready to get her coronavirus shot.
“I’m making my appointment at midnight tonight,” the high school junior from Santa Clara said on Wednesday. “It’s important to me to protect other people.”
Kalb is one of many teenagers in California who will become eligible for the vaccine on Thursday, April 15 when shots will be offered to everyone 16 and older. The teens who score a vaccine appointment will join the nearly 16 million Californians who have already gotten at least one shot. About 9.6 million Californians are fully vaccinated.
“We want to get our percentage of vaccinated population as high as we can, it adds to herd immunity,” said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the COVID-19 Testing and Vaccine Officer for Santa Clara County.
In addition to protecting others, Kalb is excited to get back to activities like ballet.
“We didn’t get to do the Nutcracker this past year,” she said. This December, she hopes to be onstage in a tutu.
Gabriella Cuellar, an 18-year-old from Mountain House, a small community in Alameda County, already got her first dose a few weeks ago.
“I was eligible because of pre-existing conditions, and because I was working and was considered and essential worker,” she said.
The high school senior and water polo player said the sign-up process was “confusing” and a bit of a headache because “there was no place available close to me.” So she drove 40 minutes away to a pharmacy in Manteca to get her first shot.
Cuellar has friends and classmates who are hesitant to get vaccinated just because their parents aren’t sure about its safety or efficacy.
“A lot of them are waiting for more results — which is understandable,” she said.
Eighteen-year-old Helen Earle from Tracy is in this situation.
“I haven’t been able to make an appointment yet,” she said. “The only thing that’s holding me back is my parents.”
Earle said her parents are “skeptical” of the vaccine. “They’ll take it if they need to take it, but they don’t want to be first in line.”
Fenstersheib said that parents should “weigh the risk and benefit” between the very low possibility of side effects and the higher possibility of coronavirus infection for their kids— and themselves.
“Sometimes in the younger population, they feel they won’t get very sick, or that they are invincible and it’s no big deal,” he said. But young people are driving many of the recent infection “waves” seen across the country, he noted.
“Anybody can get infected,” he said. “We’ve had young kids hospitalized and see long term (symptoms) even in the younger population.”
According to the California Department of Public Health, as of April 7 there have been 377,367 cases of COVID-19 in kids ages 5-17.
Fenstersheib emphasized that the data show the Pfizer vaccine, the only vaccine currently permitted for use in people under 18, is “exceptionally safe.”
Unlike Earle and Cuellar, teenagers under the age of 18 need parental or guardian consent to get vaccinated in California. Some states like South Carolina and Delaware allow teenagers to bypass parental permission to obtain their COVID shot, but California requires an OK from a parent or guardian.
Linda Navarret of Santa Clara plans to sign her 15-year-old daughter Kailey up for her shot as soon as she’s eligible.
“I want her to be healthy, and others around her to be healthy, too,” Navarret said
Both mother and daughter have missed being able to see extended family during the pandemic, and getting vaccinated marks one more step closer to normal, Navarett said.
“We see them on Zoom, but it just isn’t the same,” she said.
Cristopher Rios DeLeon, 17, of Santa Clara plans to go with his dad to get his first dose on Friday at Levi’s Stadium. He plays soccer and works at a food bank, so he’s hyper-aware of staying COVID-free.
“Our first game of the season got cancelled because someone on the other team tested positive,” he said. Their soccer season got pushed back from the fall to the spring, and they have to wear masks when they practice. “We’re just trying to stay safe as possible,” he said.
His teammate Joshua Trejo of Campbell is 15, so he won’t be eligible for awhile. But he said he’ll get the shot whenever he can.
“I’d rather get the side effects of the vaccine than get COVID,” he said.
Seventeen-year-old Margherita Zago of Mountain House, an exchange student from Italy, said she will get the vaccine when she returns home over the summer, with her mom’s permission.
After a rough start with online only classes in a new country, she said the spring semester has been better. She’s been able to join the water polo team with Cuellar, and she’s optimistic about the future, thanks to the proximity of the vaccine.
“Now more than ever it feels closer to us,” she said.
Cuellar said she was “a tiny bit” nervous to get the shot because of her health conditions. But she’s convinced she made the right choice.
“I completely trust all the science that went into it,” she said. “And being able to keep other people safe was my priority.”
