Los Angeles County will open a mass COVID-19 site at Dodger Stadium on Friday, while Orange County began firing at a Disneyland parking lot this week.
In the Bay Area, Sonoma County has partnered with Safeway to offer vaccinations at the Santa Rosa Fair.
When will San Francisco open a mass vaccine site?
San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney ask this question and plead for the city to speed up the process of identifying places to roll out the vaccine.
“Of course we need to have a mass distribution website in San Francisco, like almost every other major province in the state, and we actually need to have a lot of it,” Haney wrote in an email. ‘But the biggest concern is that the department does not have a commitment or plan for widespread distribution, and does not provide the basic levels of communication, transparency and coordination. All this must change immediately.
“My voters feel completely in the dark without answers from our public health department.”
The health director of SF, dr. Grant Colfax, in a press briefing on Tuesday, said the city wants to partner with healthcare providers such as Kaiser and Sutter CMPC to sharpen the spread through the opening of high-volume vaccination centers on civilian sites.
“Because the federal and state governments distribute vaccines directly to healthcare providers, these partnerships are absolutely the key to our success as a city,” Colfax said. “COVID Command Center works with healthcare providers to set up large vaccination sites where providers can serve their patients efficiently and effectively.”
Colfax could not provide a place or date for opening a website, but said one would be up and running if there was enough stock to meet the need for a place designed to accommodate large numbers of people serve.
“Our goal is to open such sites as quickly as possible when the state provides us with more vaccine. We really need to get more doses and move through the different phases of the state levels to achieve the goal of a vaccine, which will reach as many people as possible. “The first group is Phase 1a, which includes health workers and residents of skilled nursing homes, and the city is still in the process of completing this phase,” Colfax said, referring to the phases the state is preparing for vaccination. while moving on to Phase 1b which includes seniors.
The search for vaccination sites is focused on neighborhoods with the most vulnerable communities, and the city will also work with community groups such as the Latino Task Force and UCSF to offer vaccinations at community sites and health clinics.
Of the city’s 925,000 residents, more than 95% are covered by some form of private or public health insurance: 675,000 have private insurance, 64,000 have Medicare and 179,000 have Medicaid coverage, and 179,000 have Medicaid coverage, according to the SF Department of Public Health.
This leaves a small number of residents who do not have insurance, who need to be vaccinated, Colfax said. The department’s first priority is to vaccinate those who are not insured or underemployed by the healthcare companies.
“We are working to ensure that vulnerable populations and those who do not have access to private health care, as well as those in the communities most affected, are given preference to vaccines,” he said.