The largest coronavirus vaccination site in California will be in the heart of Silicon Valley and in the home of the San Francisco 49ers.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara will serve as a mass vaccination site with an initial capacity of 5,000 doses per day when it opens early next week, eventually increasing to 15,000 per day, the 49ers announced Friday in partnership with the County of Santa Clara.
“We recognize the urgent need for an effective and equitable vaccination effort for our community and are proud to partner with Santa Clara County to bring this vaccination site online as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said 49ers President Al Guido in a statement. “We put all the resources at our disposal to meet this challenge to ensure that members of the community in which we live every day can be vaccinated safely and quickly.”
The Levi’s Stadium site will be operated by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department and open to all eligible county residents. Earlier this week, the county announced that all residents 65 and older were eligible to schedule their appointments.
“The only way to overcome this pandemic is together, which is why I am pleased to see this collaborative approach to vaccinating our residents on a large scale,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg in a statement. “Our county has a history of leadership and opening the largest vaccination site in California in partnership with 49ers is just another example of this.”
Although Levi’s Stadium is not the first sports venue in the state to be used as a vaccination site, it will be the largest when it is fully operational. In Southern California, Petco Park and Dodger Stadium were also used to distribute vaccines. When the Dodger Stadium site was launched last month, Los Angeles officials expected to reach a capacity of 12,000 shots a day.
In Oakland, Governor Gavin Newsom announced this week that the first large-scale federal vaccination site will be launched at the Athletics home, the Oakland Coliseum.
The 49ers had previously offered Levi’s Stadium for use by the county, but county officials, while receptive to the offer, said the biggest obstacle to getting gunshots was less a matter of distribution but a lack of supply. Although the site will open with a capacity of 5,000 vaccines per day, there are plans to increase the pace to 15,000 per day “as vaccine supplies increase,” according to the press release.
Now, the organization’s offer is taking shape, with California’s largest vaccination site scheduled to launch at her home early next week.