Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Raul Ruiz among experts addressing protections for farmworkers from COVID-19

In honor of national farmworker awareness week, Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke with several experts including local congressman Dr. Raul Ruiz on the increased need for farmworkers to have access to extra protections against the coronavirus.

“I get to work from home but farmworkers can’t," Texas congresswoman Sylvia Garcia said during the Zoom meeting on Tuesday.

Several local and national leaders met virtually to discuss the disparities farmworkers face regarding protections against the coronavirus.

“Across the country, over 89,000 farm and food system workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and over 400 workers have died," Mily Trevino-Sauceda, the executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas said.

Dr. Fauci said we are at a crucial point in this pandemic right now.

“Where we’re seeing a plateauing and now even an increase in cases which is very disconcerting," he said.

Fauci said we are seeing 50,000 to 65,000 coronavirus cases a day.

“Vaccines is going to be the answer to the problem we are facing now," he said.

The problem Fauci said is inequity in getting those vaccines into the communities that need them most like the farmworker community.

“Most of our farmworkers are not vaccinated yet," Dr. Ruiz told News Channel 3 in regards to most farmworkers across the country.

Janell Percy, executive director of Growing Coachella Valley told News Channel 3 most of our local farmworkers have been vaccinated.

"I have been in charge of farmworker vaccines for the last three months," Percy said. "To date, we have fully vaccinated 4,500 agriculture employees and an additional 2,000 + have received their first dose and 1,400 will receive the first dose in the next two weeks," she added.

She said vaccinations plan to continue through the grape season for those coming to the Coachella Valley for the harvest. 

Ruiz said on Tuesday more advocating needs to be done from the top down to allocate vaccine doses to farmworkers.

“The goal is you need to take the vaccines to the people with right methodologies that work in the communities like the mobile clinics," Ruiz said.

Mobile vaccine clinics have already started being deployed out to the east valley but Ruiz said more work needs to be done.

“I’m advocating with the Biden administration, with the retail pharmacies, with the community health centers," Ruiz said.

“It really is unacceptable to say that the rest of the country is doing well in containing the infection but you have individual groups like farmworkers who are left out of the protective umbrella that we have," Fauci added.

You can watch the full live-streamed event here: https://www.facebook.com/congressional.hispanic.caucus