San Francisco leaders clash over the timing of opening mass vaccination sites against coronavirus

As California strives to rectify the slow launch of the vaccine, several potential mass vaccination sites have been offered across the state – including Levi’s Stadium, Oakland Coliseum and – further afield – Disneyland in Anaheim and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

None were announced in San Francisco, however – leaving at least one critic frustrated.

“Let’s make it happen in SF,” tweeted supervisor Matt Haney. “It could be at Oracle, in Kezar, in many of the locations across the city that were used for testing. We can do that – it’s time for a wide and mass distribution of this vaccine in SF and beyond, led by our Department of Public Health. “

The city is looking for mass vaccination sites and is identifying “multiple sites” that could serve as mass distribution points, according to Mayor London Breed and health director Dr. Grant Colfax. At a news conference on Tuesday, neither she nor Colfax said which location could take the role. They said there are still not enough vaccine doses available for the need for a large-scale site.

Breed and Colfax also said that creating a massive vaccine distribution site would not serve those most in need of the vaccine – homeless, uninsured or undocumented – in the early stages of an implementation.

“It can’t be just about a big, massive website,” said Breed. “One lesson we learned from our testing system was that we need to work with our community partners and find our most affected communities where they are.”

So far, the Department of Health has distributed 22,150 doses of the vaccine to the San Francisco General Hospital, Laguna Honda Hospital and small community clinics, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Of these, 9,259 were administered.

The first people eligible for the vaccine under state guidelines include those who work in hospitals and people who work or live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Colfax said that some San Francisco residents at the next level – people 65 and older – will receive the vaccine later this week.

The city wants to first look at localized community sites to vaccinate people who may fall into the cracks in the city’s health care system, Breed said. San Francisco is identifying “multiple locations” that can serve as points of massive distribution, said Breed.

Colfax also said that the city simply does not have enough vaccines at the moment to justify opening a large website.

“When we have a sufficient supply of vaccine to meet the need for a mass vaccination site, we hope to have that site up and running,” said Colfax.

But Haney, contacted by phone on Tuesday, said it was “incredibly inappropriate and totally wrong” for the department to charge private suppliers for distribution. Instead, he said, they should take responsibility for widespread disorder in the city. He suggested that the city should open a mass distribution site, like the ones being planned or considered in Oakland and Santa Clara.

Haney convened a hearing on the city’s vaccine distribution plan at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. The supervisor himself – a frequent critic of the city’s Public Health Secretariat – has no direct power to change the city’s strategy of distributing the extremely limited stock of vaccines, since it is ultimately up to the state and municipal Public Health Secretariat .

Still, he called for a more aggressive deployment in San Francisco, suggesting that there should be, for example, “a huge site in the Mission,” where Latino residents were particularly hard hit by the virus.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health is “explicitly postponing this responsibility in a way that other counties don’t,” he said. “They are going to have to change that … If people don’t have a website, as they did with COVID testing, it won’t work.”

The Health Department declined to comment on Haney’s criticism on Tuesday.