Over 40 million COVID-19 cases have been reported nationwide, and infections among children are spiking. More than 250,000 child cases were reported last week. That’s more than a quarter of the total number of cases reported over that period.
Doctors say vaccination is vital to reduce the case count, and on Wednesday, SeaWorld San Diego hosted a pop-up vaccination clinic to get more shots in arms.
Tenth-grade student Esmeralda Gamboa was one of those who lined up for a vaccine. “It’s important to get vaccinated to keep others safe and myself safe,” Gamboa said.
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Her mother brought her to the clinic from Spring Valley, where she is a student at Steele Canyon High School. Late this afternoon, the school's COVID-19 dashboard showed 13 active cases among students.
SeaWorld San Diego partnered with the city of San Diego and Sharp Healthcare to offer the vaccines today.
Erika Diprofio is the vice president of marketing for SeaWorld and was happy to see people lining up to get vaccinated.
“Everyone knows where we’re located. We have such wonderful space, parking is ample and free and on top of that we wanted to give back. ” Diprofio said. “For people who are getting vaccinated today, we’re giving everyone two tickets to Howl-O-Scream, our new nighttime scary halloween event at SeaWorld starting September 17.”
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Diprofio has two children.
“As a family we try to stay as safe and healthy as possible and we also don’t want to make others around us sick or even our children’s grandparents who are older and we want to make sure that they stay healthy as well,” Diprofio said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor to the President, is concerned about the children who may be too young to get vaccinated.
"We've got to get the school system masked, in addition to surrounding the children with vaccinated people," Fauci said.
Gamboa, the high school student, also expressed concern about the number of children getting infected. “That’s a lot of cases and it needs to go down real quick or we’re not going to end this anytime soon,” Gamboa said.
With cases and hospitalizations on the rise, President Joe Biden plans to address the nation on Thursday about the next step in his pandemic response.
