Los Angeles County will open a massive COVID-19 website at Dodger Stadium on Friday, while Orange County began administering injections in a Disneyland parking lot this week.
In the bay area, Sonoma County has partnered with Safeway to offer vaccines at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds.
When will San Francisco open a mass vaccination center?
San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney is asking this question and advocating that the city speed up its process of identifying places to implant the vaccine.
“Obviously, we should have a mass distribution location in San Francisco, like almost every other major county in the state, and we should really have a lot of them,” wrote Haney by email. “But the biggest concern is that the department has no commitment or plan for widespread disclosure and is not offering basic levels of communication, transparency and coordination. All of that needs to change, immediately.
“My constituents feel completely in the dark, with no response from our public health department.”
SF Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said at a news conference on Tuesday that the city is looking to partner with health care providers, such as Kaiser and Sutter CMPC, to increase distribution by opening high-profile vaccine centers. volume in civic locations.
“As the federal and state governments are distributing vaccines directly to healthcare professionals, these partnerships are absolutely essential to our success as a city,” said Colfax. “The COVID Command Center is working with healthcare providers to create large vaccination sites where providers can serve their patients efficiently and effectively.”
Colfax was unable to provide a venue or date for the opening of a venue, but said that one will be up and running when there is enough supply to meet the need for a venue designed to serve large numbers of people.
“Our goal is to open these sites as soon as possible when the state provides us with more vaccines. We really need to get more doses and go through the different phases of the state levels to meet the goal of a vaccine site that is to vaccinate as much as possible, ”said Colfax, referring to the vaccine prioritization phases provided by the state. The first group is Phase 1a, which includes health professionals and qualified nursing facility residents, and the city is still completing this phase as it moves to Phase 1b, which includes the elderly.
The search for vaccine locations is focused on neighborhoods with the most vulnerable communities, and the city will also partner with community groups such as the Latin Task Force and UCSF to offer vaccines at community locations and health clinics.
Of the city’s 925,000 residents, more than 95% are covered by some form of public or private 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 Department of Health. Public Health of SF.
This leaves a small number of uninsured residents in need of vaccinations, Colfax said, and the department’s number one priority is to vaccinate those who are uninsured or under-served by healthcare providers.
“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 most affected communities, are prioritized for vaccines,” he said.