Los Angeles is temporarily shutting down several vaccination sites in the city in the coming days, after it burned its limited allocation of the first doses of Moderna’s vaccine.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti made the announcement during a news conference on Wednesday, noting that the city distributed 98% of all doses received. The closure will affect Dodgers Stadium sites and the other four non-mobile vaccination sites on Friday and Saturday, with reopening scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.
“This week we received just 16,000 new doses. 16,000,” said Garcetti during the briefing. “It is the number of doses that we distribute each day. This is unacceptable.”
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The week’s allocation is a reduction of 90,000 doses from the previous week, said the mayor.
However, the federal authorities involved in the COVID-19 response gave an optimistic tone this week, with the Biden administration claiming that vaccine supplies have increased from 8.6 million doses delivered to the states weekly to 11 million, or an increase total of 28% in the first three weeks. Garcetti said the overall increase has not yet reached Los Angeles.
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Garcetti said other cities with smaller populations and fewer cases are receiving more doses than Los Angeles County.
“I don’t want to take a single dose of them, but it is only right that Los Angeles receive a constant supply to meet the moment of our need.”
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Despite the closures, Los Angeles will continue its mobile vaccination in an attempt to reach at-risk minority populations. Garcetti noted that only 3.5% of doses in the entire county were going into the arms of black residents, and a new pilot program bringing vaccines to dense and impoverished communities saw two-thirds of 1,700 vaccines administered to black residents last week. Since then, capacity has doubled and will soon triple with the addition of a third mobile unit next week.
“Even with fewer vaccines and having to close Dodger Stadium, we will keep them running this week because we cannot afford to see the outbreaks and, frankly, the uneven deaths that we are seeing in communities of color,” he said.