Riverside’s public information officer and library director are among city employees who recently got coveted coronavirus vaccines because of a broad interpretation of who qualifies as an emergency services worker.
Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson and Riverside City Council members also qualify to be vaccinated, city officials said Friday, Jan. 29, though it’s not clear whether they have been. Citing a federal patient privacy law, Riverside officials won’t confirm which elected officials or city employees have received the shots, which are open only to certain categories of people.
The city employee vaccinations come amid a severe shortage of COVID-19 vaccines locally, statewide and nationally. About 800,000 Riverside County residents qualify for the vaccine, but just 194,000 doses were available countywide as of Friday, and recent Inland vaccination clinics have led to frustration and anger among those — especially senior citizens — unable to get an appointment.
Riverside officials say such employees qualify under state law because in the case of an emergency — such as the current coronavirus pandemic — these workers would do whatever’s needed to help the city, whether or not it’s in their normal job description.
Riverside resident Mike McCoy, who got an appointment for his 91-year-old mother after initial setbacks, objected to using such a broad definition of emergency worker to expand eligibility.
“I totally disagree with that,” he said. “Common sense should tell you who the emergency services workers are.” “Front-line” city workers who deal directly with the public should be able to get the vaccine, McCoy said, but those who don’t should not.
Pandemic work alone should not be the sole basis for vaccinating someone, Brandon Brown, a UC Riverside associate professor with a background in epidemiology, said via email.
“We need to protect front line folks with high daily exposure and those with underlying health conditions rather than people like me working from home on COVID,” he said.
Riverside officials said they’re simply interpreting state law and stress that an employee’s job title might not match what they’re doing on the public’s behalf to fight the virus.
“The vast majority at (Riverside’s emergency-response center) have other jobs and have been tasked with COVID response,” said Capt. Brian Guzzetta, a Riverside Fire Department spokesman. “Park staff are handing out food. Event staff are running vaccination sites.”
“This has been the direction of city management and elected officials to give full support to department heads” to handle the pandemic, he said. “We have a limited workforce. When fighting COVID-19, it took all hands on deck.”
Who’s an emergency services worker?
California currently allows those 65 and older, teachers, food and agriculture workers, health care workers, residents of long-term care facilities and first responders to get the vaccine. Also eligible is a group known as emergency service workers.
Guzzetta said Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state-of-emergency declaration from March led to activation of Riverside’s emergency operations center. Staff assigned to the center, which is active 24 hours a day, regularly meet virtually, Guzzetta said.
State law allows all government employees to be classified as “disaster-service workers,” said Mark Annas, Riverside’s emergency services administrator.
The number of employees classified as emergency services workers varies depending on the city’s official emergency level, but right now, about 200 of the city’s roughly 2,400 employees are part of the emergency operations center, working on the city’s COVID-19 response and thus eligible for vaccines, according to Guzzetta and Riverside Public Information Officer Phil Pitchford.
Often, an emergency worker’s duties don’t match their job title, Pitchford said.
“Whoever has available transferable skills (such as social media expertise) to do a task that needs to be accomplished, (we) bring them into the EOC so we can get the work done.”
Following city-set guidelines, Pitchford, 56, said he got his first vaccine dose earlier this month at Corona High School. A Jan. 13 email from Annas to Pitchford, Christmas and other city employees gave instructions for getting an online appointment at a Riverside County vaccination clinic and obtaining a letter signed by Annas verifying their eligibility.
“Nobody’s cutting the line,” said Pitchford, who said he’s been exposed to COVID-19 in the course of his duties — though “not nearly as much” as the city’s fire or police department public information officers. He routinely issues press releases to the news media about the city’s pandemic response.
“The job I do puts me in that category” as an emergency services worker, he said.
Under the state’s tier system, first responders and others were able to be vaccinated before emergency services workers, Guzzetta said.
“We don’t make the tier system,” Guzzetta said. “The tier systems vary from state to state. We followed it to a ‘T’ as to who’s eligible.”
Right now, Riverside’s libraries are physically closed to the public. But Library Director Erin Christmas, who was classified as an emergency services worker, got a shot.
“I could cry!” she wrote in a Jan. 14 social media post in which she held her vaccination card. This newspaper obtained a screenshot of the post.
Reached by phone Thursday, Christmas confirmed getting vaccinated “a couple of weeks ago” but declined further comment.
While he couldn’t go into detail about Christmas’ pandemic-related duties, Pitchford said: “Everybody works in the EOC does so in an effort to continue providing services to the public … or are brought into the EOC” to do special programs like food and diaper giveaways.
During the pandemic, the city library system has held “Library to Go” programs in which the public could reserve library materials and put them up on a table set up in the libraries. “The EOC is a place where we’d talk about program like that,” Pitchford said.
If the mayor or council members got vaccinated, it’s justified, Guzzetta said, because “when it comes to the policy-driven nature of an emergency response, the mayor or elected officials oftentimes are the policy makers when it comes to the activities of an emergency center. They give the direction and the emergency operations center puts that into motion.”
McCoy, the Riverside resident, said he doesn’t believe prominent city politicians should be able to get a shot, if they aren’t otherwise eligible. After high-profile federal officials received vaccine on national television, he said, there’s no need for local officials to be seen getting shots to build public confidence in the vaccine.
Did council members get a shot?
Emergency worker status isn’t the only way a Riverside city employee can get vaccinated.
They could be 65 or older. Or, in the case of a council member, their day job could make them eligible.
It’s not clear whether new Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson or how many of the city’s seven council members got vaccinated. Council members Ronaldo Fierro, Chuck Conder, Gaby Plascencia and Steve Hemenway did not respond to requests for comment.
Lock Dawson couldn’t be reached. Her chief of staff, Teresa Rosales, said the mayor would not be available “at all” Friday. Rosales said she could not speak to whether Lock Dawson had received a shot.
Councilwoman Erin Edwards on Wednesday, Jan. 27, declined to say whether she was vaccinated, deferring to Pitchford, who said he didn’t know whether she got a shot and if he did, wouldn’t be able to release that information.
Councilman Andy Melendrez, 67, said he has not gotten the vaccine and is watching the county website for an appointment. He was unaware of a vaccination event for council members.
Similarly, Councilman Jim Perry, 63, said he hasn’t gotten a shot and knew nothing about vaccinations for council members or city officials.
In preparation for Riverside’s first vaccination clinic, which opens Saturday, Jan. 30, at the Riverside Convention Center, city officials asked school districts and other public agencies to send eligible people to be vaccinated in a “dry run” Wednesday and Thursday. Eligible city employees were invited, too.
The purpose was to identify problems — traffic flow, for example — before the center was fully up and running, Pitchford and Guzzetta said. The site handled 470 vaccinations Wednesday and 450 Thursday, and while some who got vaccinated were city employees, many were not, Guzzetta said.
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