Bay Area museum to offer free pass for up to 8 people at vaccine clinic

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- As pediatric COVID cases continue to be a concern nationwide, the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, a popular family destination is working to bring vaccines and a free fun experience to Bay Area kids.

More than 2,100 kids across the country have been hospitalized this week with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID.

That's up by 800 compared to a month ago, according to federal data.

New York's cases remain the worst.

"I expect the same thing would happen here," said Stanford Health Care, infectious disease physician, Dr. Stan Deresinski about the local outlook.

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With the vaccine only approved for kids 5 and up, he says the best way to protect kids younger than that is to keep close watch over who they're around.

"Their only protection is staying away from people who are infected," he said, "For many of them, (that) just means their family members should all be vaccinated."

In the South Bay, The Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose is hoping to help families get vaccinated.

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They teamed up with Santa Clara County Public Health and other partners to give families a chance to get vaccinated between January 2 and 23 and enjoy the museum for free.

"This is a pop-up vaccination clinic," said Marilee Jennings, the museum's executive director, "So what you do is you just show up and line up and it runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m."

Each family who comes through the vaccine clinic, gets a free pass to the museum which is good for one visit for up to eight people.

You can either use the pass the day of or until May 31.

Though the two clinics in January have been planned for a while now, the museum says the recent headlines have pushed them to work on more dates.

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"When we started reading those reports coming out of New York about the hospitalizations for very young children," Jennings said, "We really redoubled our efforts to try to figure out how to get more of these vaccination clinics going."

With more clinics being planned in 2022, the museum says it hopes each clinic is a step closer to getting kids back to pre-pandemic life.

"We believe that by helping families come up with an easy way to engage in vaccinations where you can get the vaccination done, but also treat the family to a fun thing will make the difference for some families," Jennings said.

To find out more about the pop-up clinics, visit this page.