The COVID-19 vaccine at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, along with four other venues in the city, will temporarily close due to major shortages, Mayor Eric Garcetti
LA Garcetti Vaccination in Los Angeles Temporarily Closed by Protesters LA Mayor Receives First Dose of Coronavirus Vaccine After Spending Days on Grammys Super Web Site Over Coronavirus Problems (D) said.
The mayor announced Wednesday that the city’s five walk-in and drive-through sites will close for at least two days from Friday. The sites could reopen Tuesday or Wednesday, he predicted.
Garcetti described the supply of vaccines to the city, which is expected to be depleted on Thursday, as ‘unpredictable’, ‘uneven’ and ‘unacceptable’. He noted that Los Angeles received 16,000 new doses this week, slightly more than the total it administers per day. Los Angeles received 90,000 doses last week and 29,000 doses the week before, he added.
“We vaccinate people faster when new bottles arrive here in Los Angeles, and I’m very worried now,” the mayor said at a news conference.
“It’s a huge obstacle in our race to vaccinate Angelenos,” he added.
Garcetti stressed that scheduled second doses will not be affected, but “it will prevent us from continuing with new first doses.”
He said he did not want to “point fingers” but noted that other cities with a smaller population than Los Angeles are getting more doses.
“I do not want to take a single dose away from them, but it is only reasonable that Los Angeles receives a steady supply to meet the moment of our need,” he added.
The city will open mobile sites it has deployed in South Los Angeles, where an excessive number of residents were infected and killed by COVID-19.
Overall, Los Angeles gave 293,252 vaccines with an average of 13,051 vaccinations per day.
Increase in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in late December and early January and has since begun to level off in Los Angeles, according to provincial data.
The province has an average of seven days testing the positivity rate of 8.4 percent, lower than the 20 percent recorded around New Year’s Day, but still above the 5 percent threshold that experts want to see before reopening.