Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles will be launched as a mass vaccination site from Friday morning, the city’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, announced at a news conference on Thursday.
The site, which the mayor called “the country’s largest vaccination site”, will have the capacity to vaccinate 12,000 people a day. A whole workforce was mobilized to administer the vaccines, according to Garcetti.
“This vaccine is safe, this vaccine is safe,” he repeatedly emphasized, urging residents to get the vaccine as soon as they are eligible.
“It is your civic duty when it is your turn to get the vaccine. It is an act of love for your fellow citizen because it will save the lives of someone or many people, and it is a step forward to reopen our schools and our economy. “
Who can get the vaccine: In Los Angeles County, the vaccine is currently available only to healthcare professionals and the elderly who live in qualified nursing homes and nursing facilities. Although the county has approximately 1 million health workers, Garcetti said that about half of them have not yet received the vaccine.
“The end result is that we don’t have enough vaccines,” said Garcetti.
He also said that some websites may be reserving their vaccine distribution to administer the second dose to their healthcare professionals.
With the opening of Dodger Stadium and five additional vaccination sites in the county, Garcetti said he expects hundreds of thousands to be vaccinated each week.
What’s happening in Los Angeles County: The county reported a total of 975,299 cases of coronavirus and 13,234 deaths.
Hospitalizations in the county continue to overwhelm hospitals and health professionals, and currently there are 7,906 people being treated in the hospital with coronavirus – 21% of them in the intensive care unit.
Garcetti said that while there are early signs that county hospitalizations may be stabilizing, he is “not even close to being out of danger”.