The Long Beach Department of Public Health gave the university 1,170 doses for the first round of vaccinations, which began on Tuesday.
“Due to our size and the fact that we have health care providers here on campus, this could be a vaccination site to take care of the city within a city in the state of Long Beach,” said Jeff Cook, director of communications for CSULB .
The university is using public health guidelines to determine who will get the vaccine first, starting with those currently working on campus.
“We will then move on to those who are older and who may have high-risk conditions, and eventually our hope, of course, is to move on to the rest of our employees and our students.”
Matt Evans, a member of the campus IT team, said he was grateful to receive a vaccine earlier.
“Very incredible, you know, because everyone is having a hard time getting it,” said Evans.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia says that while the start of vaccinations is encouraging for the reopening of face-to-face classes in the fall, he says the university still needs thousands more doses to vaccinate the more than 6,000 teachers on campus.
“The big problem now is supply, so we just need the feds to provide more vaccines to states and cities. Obviously, we hadn’t had much plan in a few months. Things are improving now, but I hope that in the coming weeks vaccine deliveries will begin to take place across the country, “said Garcia.
Cal State Long Beach is what we call a “closed capsule”, so only employees and college students will receive the COVID vaccine.
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