County Covid vaccinations for young children begin Saturday, June 25.

Covid-19 vaccines for children between the ages of 6 months to 4 years will be available from the Monterey County Health Department's Public Health Bureau beginning tomorrow, Saturday, June 25.

The first clinic will be available that day from 10am-4pm at the Breadbox, located at 745 N. Sanborn Road in Salinas. Vaccines will be available for children and adults at the clinic. 

Two more clinics are scheduled for upcoming Tuesdays in the Salinas Valley. One will be 4-7pm, June 28, at Oak Avenue Elementary School, 1239 Oak Ave., in Greenfield. The other will be 4-7pm, July 5, at Santa Rita Elementary School, 2014 Santa Rita St., in Salinas.

Parents can make an appointment for these clinics at myturn.ca.gov or walk in, but appointments are strongly encouraged for families with young children to reduce wait times.

There are other ways to find vaccines for young children. Officials are encouraging parents to contact their primary care providers to see if they are offering the vaccines. Local pharmacies may also be a good resource.

A good source of information for vaccination sites is montereycountyvaccines.com.

After a rigorous trial involving over 4,500 young children in the U.S., the vaccines were approved last week by an advisory committee which was endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control on June 18. They were approved on June 19 by Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup for use in California, Oregon and Washington. 

The only thing that was stopping local vaccinations in the first few days they were allowed was supply. Monterey County received its shipment of the vaccines—formulated in smaller doses than others for older children and adults—in recent days.

Approximately 2 million children under the age of 5 have been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, according to the CDC. Of those, 20,000 children were hospitalized and 200 died. A disproportionate number of the hospitalizations and deaths occurred among children of color. 

In addition, there is a chance that children can develop complications with long-term consequences, said Reiko Sakai, a pediatrician with Natividad, during a county press briefing on June 22. One of those complications is myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. She is encouraging her parents to have their children vaccinated against Covid, and plans on vaccinating her own children.