CVS stores now offer vaccinations in Bay Area
There’s another option for people searching for a coronavirus vaccination in the Bay Area.
CVS on Feb. 11 began offering appointments for COVID-19 shots at its stores in the Bay Area. The pharmacy chain will begin inoculating people today.
Eligible people — those over age 65 and health care workers — can book an appointment at Cvs.com, by calling 800-7467287 or through the CVS Pharmacy app. People can book an appointment for their second dose at the same time they book their first shot.
The stores offering the vaccine will shift, and availability will depend on vaccine supply. As of Feb. 11, stores in Alameda, Berkeley, Concord, Daly City, Fremont, Lafayette, Montclair, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, Pleasanton, Redwood City, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara and Vallejo were offering appointments.
As with other vaccine providers, there is intense interest in the vaccine, and on Feb. 11, the website displayed a message saying it was experiencing heavy traffic and to please stand by.
California is one of more than a dozen states where CVS is offering the vaccination.
Walgreens also is offering the coronavirus vaccination in parts of the Bay Area, including in Contra Costa County. People can make an appointment online at Walgreens.com.
A federal government plan to ban tens of thousands of workers married to H-1B visa holders from U.S. employment has been killed by the administration of President Joe Biden, according to the White House regulatory agenda.
The plan, initially proposed as a federal regulation during former President Donald Trump’s first year in office, would have stripped the right to work from the spouses, many of whom live in the Bay Area and, like their partners, work in the region’s tech companies.
“This is a huge sigh of relief for tens of thousands of H-1B workers and their family members,” said Sarah Pierce, an immigration policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “These families have lived for four years with constant threat of having their ability to make a living revoked.”
An estimated 100,000 foreign citizens, mostly Indian women, would have been affected by the rule. A number of Bay Area H-4 visa holders have described how their lives were in limbo for years, with several saying they would leave the U.S. if they were banned from working.
The H-4 visa has included the right to work in any field since 2015 as long as the holder’s spouse is on track to get a green card. The Trump administration first proposed the ban in 2017 but repeatedly delayed finalizing it. The right to work for H-4 holders has powerful support from Silicon Valley and U.S. industry. In 2019, the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents a who’s who of major Bay Area technology firms, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle and HP, joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and outsourcers in supporting continued employment under the H-4.
The Trump administration had targeted the H-1B program, dramatically boosting denial rates, particularly for outsourcing firms. Silicon Valley’s tech industry relies heavily on the H-1B and has pushed to expand the annual 85,000 cap on new visas, arguing that they need more of them to secure top global talent. But critics point to abuses and charge that the visa program is used by outsourcers and Big Tech to supplant U.S. workers, drive down wages and facilitate outsourcing.
Ron Hira, a Howard University professor who studies the H-1B, said Biden’s public statements suggest the H-4 rule is dead for good.
However, H-4 spouses remain the subject of a long-running federal court case filed by a group of technology workers. Those workers claim they were laid off after training their own H-1B replacements and allege in their lawsuit that H-4 holders unfairly compete for jobs against U.S. workers and shouldn’t be allowed to work.