San Francisco will soon open three major vaccination sites across the city, and officials hope to administer at least 10,000 doses a day, Mayor London Breed said on Friday.
A website is likely to open late next week on City College’s main campus. But there is a major obstacle that prevents the city from opening others: California’s limited vaccine supply, which has been distributed unpredictably by the state.
“We are ready for more doses, we need more doses and we are asking for more doses,” said Breed, visibly frustrated at a news conference on Friday. “We can speed up and open these locations the minute we have the vaccines. We are mobilizing the whole city. “
Friday’s announcement came after a week of accusations and complaints about who is to blame for the slow launch of the vaccine in California, which is among the slowest in the country. Distribution is not only a huge logistical challenge, but it also fueled political tension among elected officials, all crazy about the same issues: the lack of vaccines and the uncertainty of when their constituents will receive them.
Meanwhile, hospitals are struggling with a deadly wave of cases and new highly contagious strains of viruses that can potentially wreak more havoc on the healthcare system. The stakes could not be higher for cities, counties and the state to put more shots in people’s arms.
“Our case rate is higher than ever, but vaccines are our way out,” San Francisco’s director of public health, Grant Colfax, said at Friday’s event. “And we need more as soon as possible.”
San Francisco hopes to increase its distribution through partnerships with private health service providers – who are receiving most of the state’s supply – to manage large vaccine centers. These providers include Kaiser, Sutter, Dignity Health and UCSF. This means that anyone in the city, with or without insurance, can go to the places when it is their turn.
The sites will be located on City College’s main campus on Ocean Avenue near Interstate 280, Moscone Center in SoMa and The SF Market, a wholesale production site in Bayview. The authorities chose these locations because they are in or near the neighborhoods most affected by the virus.
The public health department also plans to administer vaccines in more than a dozen community clinics and in various locations across the city.
On Tuesday, San Francisco residents will be able to access a website, www.sf.gov/vaccinenotify, where they can submit their contact and eligibility information, and then be notified by email when it is their turn to be vaccinated.
But considering how slow delivery of the vaccine has been so far, city residents may be waiting for that email.
California administered only
San Francisco County has received 33,975 doses so far. As of Friday, only 13,566 vaccines had been administered – about 1,200 more than the previous day. These doses do not include vaccines sent directly to major health care providers.
Breed said that all available doses were assigned to someone, and the city expects to use all available doses next week. The authorities are asking the state for another “large volume order”.
Still, the logistical problems remain: some vaccines have been allocated to facilities that are still expanding their operations, while others must be reserved so that people can receive the second necessary dose.
“We are not getting any vaccines,” said Breed. “They’re all walking out the door.”
Officials in San Francisco – and around the bay area – have also complained that they are receiving an inconsistent and unpredictable supply from the state, making it difficult for them to plan how many appointments they can make or how much staff they will need on any given day.
San Francisco, for example, received 3,900 doses in the first week of January and 11,825 the following week. Next week, the county was told it will receive 4,275 doses. It’s a big drop, without much reason.
Meanwhile, residents who are eligible for the vaccine have reported mass confusion about how, when and where they can get the vaccines. Some who called their providers for answers had to wait several hours on hold.
And these agitated residents flooded their elected officials with questions, wondering why the process looks cluttered with sparse information, although officials apparently had enough time to prepare.
Supervisor Matt Haney channeled this frustration through Twitter this week, and harshly criticized the public health department for what he considered an indifferent approach to vaccinating residents.
He said it was “incredibly inappropriate and totally wrong” for private suppliers to be primarily responsible for distribution, although it is up to the state to decide who receives which doses.
Still, he called for a more aggressive deployment of the city and the creation of a mass vaccination site, such as Petco Park in San Diego and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which opened on Friday. He will hold a hearing on the city’s distribution plan on Wednesday.
Haney’s comments infuriated many in the public health department and the mayor’s office, who said they were working on a larger distribution plan – but that their hands were tied by the state’s meager supplies.
Mayor Breed & DPH are announcing 3 mass vaccination sites, as well as community sites across the city.
This is a massive and welcome change from a week ago, when their position was “no widespread distribution in the county”.
– Matt Haney (@MattHaneySF) January 15, 2021
“I know people are asking us to put all of these sites everywhere,” said Breed on Friday. “Well, we are setting up the sites. We simply do not have complete control of the vaccines ”.
The state attributes its irregular supply to the national shortage of vaccines and also to the federal government’s lack of leadership. As production increased, Darrel Ng, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, said on Thursday that counties will begin to see greater quantities of the vaccine and more predictable delivery.
At the news conference, Breed said he understood why people were angry and confused about the vaccine’s release.
But, as she has been doing since March, the mayor asked for more patience from her city.
“We have come too far to start to fall apart now,” she said. “I know more than anyone, with everyone’s life on their shoulders, the importance of opening the city as quickly as possible.”
Trisha Thadani is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @TrishaThadani