- More than 100,000 doses of vaccine have been administered at Disneyland since last month.
- Disneyland is one of several “super” vaccination sites in Orange County, California.
- The theme park has been closed since last March.
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More than 100,000 doses of vaccine have been administered at Disneyland, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced during the company’s first fiscal quarter earnings conference call on Thursday.
Disney announced last month that it would transform part of its Disneyland resort in Southern California into a mass vaccination site, the first of five “Super” distribution points being installed in Orange County, where Disneyland is located.
Essential workers and people over 70 were among the first classes to be vaccinated at the theme park. The night before operations began, 10,000 people signed up for vaccines, causing the county website to collapse, according to CBS Los Angeles.
Local firefighters and paramedics vaccinated 3,000 people on the first day of operation, CBS reported. Orange County said it plans to complete all vaccinations in the county by July 4, 2021.
Read More: Disney has lost at least 40 key executives since Bob Chapek became CEO. Insiders describe how he remade the company’s power structure.
Southern California has been hit hard by the pandemic. Insider’s Aria Bendix reported that Los Angeles recorded more cases and deaths than any other US county, most of which occurred during the past two months. Epidemiologists have attributed the increase to a number of factors, including overcrowded homes from several generations, a new local variant of the virus and increased pandemic fatigue in the region.
Orange County has reported about 241,000 cases since the virus began and 3,493 deaths, according to the Orange County Register.
Disneyland has been closed since mid-March, although Walt Disney World, Florida, is currently operating. The closure of the park, along with the suspension of Disney’s cruise business and the closure of other parks worldwide, had a serious impact on Disney’s business: the company said during its conference call on Thursday that operating revenue of its experiences with parks and product businesses decreased “significantly” from the previous year to a loss of $ 119 million.