Per the Chancellor's office, “California has administered 33 million vaccinations, and 30.3 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.” The state ranks 25th in the country, per Becker’s Hospital Review, as far as percentage of distributed vaccines that have been administered (79.58).
 
Obviously more work remains, especially in minority communities in the Inland Empire.
 
“Convincing Black and Latino residents remains an issue in Riverside County,” Wolde-Ab Isaac, chancellor of Riverside Community College District, said. “Unfortunately, those groups continue to be heavily impacted by this pandemic in a number of areas.”
 
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC.gov), “data on race and ethnicity for more than 90 percent of people who died from COVID-19 reveal that the percent of Hispanic or Latino, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people who have died from COVID-19 . . . is higher than the percentage of these racial and ethnic groups among the total US population.” The CDC added, “this disparity is even greater when the percentages are age-standardized (adjusted for differences in the age distribution across racial and ethnic groups).” 
 
Learn about the benefits of getting vaccinated. Click here to understand what unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals are able to do safely. California officials stress that 70 to 80 percent of the population needs to be immunized in order to reach herd immunity (a level where scientists say the virus will be lacking new hosts).
 
“Regularity will return, but we need to continue to push messaging, especially to Blacks and Hispanic communities,” Isaac said. “And, the best way to do that is continue to stress the benefits of the vaccine. It is important as educational leaders to continue to reach out to these hard-hit communities, sharing the vaccines’ benefits and how getting vaccinated can lead the state back to a level of normalcy.”