Teens on rescue squad receive vaccinations

Classified as first responders, teen volunteers with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Unit were moved up in coronavirus priority tiers to receive vaccinations.

Fourteen teen volunteers with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Unit recently moved up in coronavirus priority tiers to receive vaccinations.

Team leader Michael St. John said Marin County public health officials classified all 110 volunteer members of the team — adults and teens — as first responders and thus on a higher priority tier than a typical healthy teen or adult.

St. John said the work can involve administering first aid and can take place in confined spaces with close contact, such as in tents or vehicles.

“Our teen members are responding side-by-side with adult members,” he said. “They have the same training and the same skills.”

So far, about 60 members of the Marin rescue team have been vaccinated, but St. John said its vaccination classification was recently changed at the state level to a lower priority tier. The remaining team members will have to wait, St. John said.

The decision to vaccinate some teen members involved several factors, St. John said. The team has to travel as a group for long distances in close quarters, sometimes to other counties.

He said only teen volunteers who were highly active during the team’s 59 missions last year were allowed to receive the vaccine.

Volunteers had to be at least 16 years old to receive the Pfizer vaccine, excluding members who were 14 or 15. The Pfizer vaccine is being administered at the public safety vaccination site at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, St. John said.

St. John said four Marin teen search members helped recover the remains Thursday of a man who was reported missing since last weekend in Mendocino County. The teens traveled four hours each way to participate in the search, St. John said.

“They are first responders, in every sense of the word,” St. John said. “They are on the front lines.”

The decision to vaccinate the youths has drawn some criticism.

“If a 16-to-18-year-old is considered high risk to transmit the virus when working outside while masked at SAR, then why are they considered low risk to teachers in the Marin high schools?” Jessica Crabtree, a teacher at Redwood High School in Larkspur, said in an email.

Crabtree said teens in high schools should get similar consideration because they are at risk of transmitting to teachers.

“When we eventually open at Redwood, I will be indoors with 10 to 12 teens at a time, in a room, in a building with 600 teens and 100 adults — a building that opens to hallways with poor ventilation,”