By Post Staff

With the Thanksgiving break just days away, Oakland Unified School District staff are working to help prevent a possible post-holiday COVID surge.

The district is strongly advocating for vaccines, and providing numerous opportunities for students, families and staff to get vaccinated. It is also offering five days of COVID testing during the week-long break and thousands of take-home tests for students and staff.

One vaccine clinic before the holiday break was at Markham Elementary School on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 18, included a special guest: California’s state epidemiologist and former Alameda County Interim Health Officer Erica Pan, M.D. administered vaccines from 4 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Pan will administer shots to students, families, and staff.

Her visit is part of the state’s push to get people vaccinated. California is focused on ensuring vaccine equity and accessibility by developing the infrastructure to support school-located vaccination clinics. California’s public health workforce has already conducted, or is planning to conduct more than 3,200 vaccination events at schools before the spring of 2022, reaching more than 2 million students across the state.

About 640 of these events are planned for November and December, reaching more than 440,000 students, including the students of Markham Elementary.

In partnership with the California Department of Public Health, the City of Oakland, COVID Clinic, the Alameda County Public Health Department, and La Clinica, OUSD is offering 21 vaccination pop-ups this week at elementary schools. This is to enable students to have their first shot before Thanksgiving break, which will mean they can receive their second shot before winter break.

Additional pop-ups are also being planned for schools in December and January. The clinics are concentrated at elementary schools in the high-priority zip codes of 94621, 94601, 94603, 94607, 94606, and 94605.

Some of the clinics will be open to multiple schools.

OUSD, which has already done more testing for COVID than any other district in the state outside Los Angeles Unified, will have all-day testing clinics at five sites next Monday through Wednesday and the following Saturday and Sunday, with a break for Thanksgiving and the day after.

Additionally, the district is making available 20,000 home tests for students at Childhood Development Centers, elementary, and middle schools in areas hardest hit by the pandemic. Students are being asked to use the tests on Sunday before returning to school on Monday, Nov. 29, and on the following Wednesday, Dec. 1.

OUSD staff is also calling families of students over the age of 12 who remain unvaccinated to remind them of how important it is to get vaccinated and connect them to local vaccine clinics.

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