Seaside leaders get busy bolstering the city’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination rate.

Seaside Fire Chief Mary Gutierrez is keeping a close watch – not only for fires, but for another threat to public safety, the city’s Covid-19 vaccination rate. She’s heading up Seaside’s Vaccination Action Team made up of city, county and state representatives as well as community and faith-based groups. She follows the weekly vaccination data from the Monterey County Health Department closely, and it shows that the city has the lowest vaccination rate per capita in Monterey County.

As of May 17, Monterey County Health Department data show 53 percent of Seaside’s 34,200 residents ages 12 years or older have received at least one dose of vaccine. It continues to lag behind other Peninsula cities and Big Sur, which range in rates from 59 percent (Monterey) to 75 percent (Carmel-by-the Sea). Overall, at least 61 percent of eligible county residents have received at least one dose, over 275,000 doses total to date.

The Vaccination Action Team includes Mayor Ian Oglesby and City Councilmember Alexis Garcia Arrazola, County Supervisor Wendy Root Askew, Assemblymember Mark Stone, community group leaders and pastors. They are focused on raising up the city’s rate as quickly as possible through clinics and messaging through influential community leaders and organizations.

The city’s racial makeup means the messaging and approaches need to be tailored, almost neighborhood by neighborhood, with 48 percent whites, 43 percent Latinos, nearly 10 percent Asians and just over 8 percent Black residents. It’s also a town of many church denominations and on May 17, County Administrator Charles McKee held a Zoom meeting with over 10 Seaside pastors to discuss vaccine hesitancy and how to overcome it. The county has also deployed the VIDA Community Health Worker Program, stationing workers outside of Mexican markets and other public spaces to answer residents’ questions.

The focus on messaging is coupled with a battery of pop-up clinics designed to meet people where they are. Recently the Seaside Fire Department partnered with the Monterey Fire Department and Montage Health to bring pop-up vaccination clinics to Laguna Grande Park and the Seaside Boys and Girls Clubs. In an effort to reach the Black community, the Friendship Baptist Church along with The Village Project vaccinated 160 people in two clinics for first and second doses.

More walk-in clinics are coming for ages 18 and up, Mondays from 10am-3pm at Oldemeyer Center from May 24 to June 28 (except Memorial Day, May 31). And starting on May 27, the Health Department will be at Oldemeyer Center for nine weeks on Thursdays from 3:45-6:45pm, vaccinating ages 12 and up.

According to county vaccine data the previous week, May 10 – before 12-15 year olds were eligible – Seaside was at just 43 percent of eligible residents vaccinated. The work of the combined partnerships “is moving the needle,” Gutierrez says.