Where Can I Get A COVID-19 Vaccine In The Bay Area ... - KQED

My Turn is available in the following languages, which you can select in the first drop-down menu: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Armenian, Japanese, Khmer, Punjabi, Russian and Farsi.

My Turn will ask you to provide a cellphone number and an email address. The state says this is so you can use two-factor authentication to doubly confirm your identity and make your appointment, and to prevent bots automatically scooping up available appointments online.

If you don’t have an email address or a cellphone number, or have questions, you can call the California COVID-19 Hotline at 833-422-4255 (Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m.-5 p.m PT) and sign up over the phone. Both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking operators are available. Callers needing information in other languages will be connected to translation service that offers 254 other languages.

If you’ve been given a special code through a local community organization for scheduling a COVID-19 vaccination, be sure to input it in the “Access Code” (formerly called an “Accessibility Code”) section on My Turn. Find more information about vaccine access codes.

Sign up for notifications and check if you’re currently able to make an appointment through My Turn.

2. Find a COVID-19 Vaccine Through Your County

Visit your county’s public health website to learn how your county is vaccinating its residents. It’s also likely that you can get vaccinated by the county you work in, if it’s different to your county of residence. The availability of vaccination appointments will be based on the doses that the state has supplied your county with.

To make sure your county reaches out to you about appointment availability, sign up for your their notifications if they’re offering them. Find your Bay Area county in our list.

3. Find a COVID-19 Vaccine Through Your Health Care Provider

If you have health insurance, check with your provider to see if they can offer you your COVID-19 vaccine. If you don’t have health insurance but get medical care through a city/county-run provider, you can check with that location.

As well as trying to talk with your health care provider directly, check the website for your provider to see if they’re offering the ability to make appointments, and sign up for their vaccine notifications if they’re offering them.

4. Find a COVID-19 Vaccine Through a Local Pharmacy

Several pharmacy chains are offering online appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine, and some also offer walk-in vaccines with no appointment:

• CVS COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments
• Rite Aid COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments
• Safeway (Albertsons) COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments
• Walgreens COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments (or call 1-800-WALGREENS, 1-800-925-4733)
• Costco’s COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments

The volunteer-run site VaccinateCA shows pharmacies near you that are offering vaccinations. You can also see these pharmacies using VaccineFinder, a tool run by Boston Children’s Hospital in partnership with the CDC.

The VA Northern California Health Care System says it’s offering COVID-19 vaccines to all enrolled veterans of all ages, and also their registered caregivers. Find out more about getting vaccinated as a veteran through VA.

SKIP STRAIGHT TO:

• Do I have to get vaccinated in my own county?
• Find your county’s sign-up links and eligibility rules

What Do I Need to Know About the Johnson and Johnson Vaccine Pause?

On April 23, U.S. health officials lifted an 11-day pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations following a recommendation by an expert panel. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the benefits of the single-dose COVID-19 shot outweigh a rare risk of blood clots. This means use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is allowed again in the Bay Area.

Out of an “abundance of caution” the Food and Drug Administration originally recommended a pause on the use of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine in the U.S. on April 13 after a very rare type of blood clot showed up in six women within about two weeks of receiving the vaccination. This news came just as California was about to open up COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to all people ages 16 and older. If you have questions, here’s what you need to know about exactly why this happened:

Q: How Small Are the Risks With the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine?

A: More than 6.8 million people in the U.S. have received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, so these are very, very small risks statistically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that all six cases occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred six to 13 days after vaccination. Among the six women, one case was fatal and one patient is in critical condition.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not “recalled,” “banned” or “canceled.”

“The relative risk is really, really low for these severe blood clots,” said Dr. Catherine Blish, infectious disease specialist at Stanford Medicine. “So we’ve had the six cases out of almost seven million vaccines delivered, which is about one in a million. And while this has been hugely controversial, the birth control pills are associated with about one in 1,000 to [one in 100] rate of blood clots.”

Q: If the Johnson & Johnson Risks Are So Small, Why Did the CDC and FDA Recommend the Pause?

A: The CDC and the FDA said the pause would allow them to investigate these reactions more. They also said it would help health care providers be ready to spot this rare blood clotting event and treat it appropriately.

To repeat: More than 6.8 million people in the U.S. have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The blood clots that prompted the pause showed up in six women. But because of the rare nature of these types of clots, health officials emphasize that they should not be treated the way other clots often are.

Most importantly, Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, said doctors should avoid using heparin, a standard blood-thinning treatment, because in these clots it “can cause tremendous harm, or the outcome can be fatal.”

The need for specialized treatment is one reason the CDC and the FDA saw an urgent need to get the word out about this rare combination of side effects.

Medical experts say this kind of pause happens a lot and is “totally normal” and reasonable in order to investigate these extremely rare cases. Regulators don’t know whether the six cases are related to the vaccine, and they need to do a deep dive into the individual patients to determine what’s going on.

Q: I Got the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine. Do I Need to Look Out for Problems?

A: If you got your Johnson & Johnson vaccine shot less than three weeks ago, you should look out for severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath. If you experience any of these symptoms, seek treatment with your health provider, an urgent care clinic or a hospital emergency room.

Remember, the number of people affected is very, very small.

If you got your shot more than three weeks ago, and you have experienced none of these symptoms, you likely do not need to worry about your J&J vaccine.

Q: How Does the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Affect the Bay Area?

A: A joint statement by the Bay Area’s county health officers on April 24 recommends that the region’s health providers should resume administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “to prevent community spread and severe illness and death from COVID-19.” This means you’ll see the J&J vaccine being offered at appointments around the Bay Area once more.

Getting Your Vaccine Through a Health System Like Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health are administering vaccines in the Bay Area with supplies issued directly from the state rather than the county. You might hear these organizations referred to as multicounty entities (or MCEs), i.e. health systems that serve multiple counties.

Kaiser Permanente says it will administer the COVID-19 vaccine to eligible people “regardless of their health plan membership.” To schedule an appointment through Kaiser Permanente as a non-member, you’ll need to obtain a medical record number (also referred to as an MRN) first via phone to be able to then go online, use the number and make your appointment.

On its site, Kaiser Permanente has a step-by-step process for non-members wishing to get their COVID-19 vaccine through Kaiser. It says non-members can also call them at (866) 454-8855.

Sutter Health says if you’re not currently a Sutter patient and wish to become one to make an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine once you become eligible, you can visit the Sutter Health sign-up page and enroll.

I Have a Health Condition or a Disability. What About My COVID-19 Vaccine?

In March, the state opened COVID-19 vaccinations up to people ages 16 to 64 who have certain disabilities or health conditions that put them at “the very highest risk” from the coronavirus, ahead of the general population.

Now that everyone ages 16 and over is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in California, this eligibility is no longer a factor — but there may still be specific vaccination opportunities within your community that focus on accessibility for disabled Californians seeking the vaccine.