Officials: Continue Coliseum shot clinic
FEMA now plans to close its local mass vaccination site one week from today
OAKLAND >> Local officials are pleading with the federal government to keep using the Oakland Coliseum parking lot as a COVID-19 community vaccination site for several more weeks.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is slated to pull out April 11, having declared that its “eight-week mission” to vaccinate people at the Coliseum is accomplished.
But while the city of Los Angeles will take over the FEMA-run vaccination site at Cal State Los Angeles, local officials here are trying to figure out who could operate the Coliseum site, according to letters obtained by this news organization.
FEMA wants to hand off the operation to Alameda County, but county leaders and health officials, as well as the Califor
nia Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, want FEMA to stick around at least four more weeks or to ensure the federal government will continue delivering vaccines through a transition.
FEMA has declined, a spokesperson told this news organization, noting that Acting Administrator Robert Fenton told the state Friday that it won’t be supplying any more doses to the Oakland and Los Angeles community vaccination centers.
“When we opened the CVCs (community vaccination centers), California was receiving roughly 1.5 million vaccine doses a week. Moving forward, California is scheduled to receive at least 2 million doses a week for the next three weeks,” the FEMA spokesperson said. “Yesterday, the state indicated it anticipates receiving as many as 3 million doses a week starting late-April. Additionally, pharmacies are scheduled to get an increase of 500,000 vaccines per week.”
But local officials fear California’s additional doses won’t come soon enough, causing a shortage at the Coliseum site if FEMA leaves.
Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and Colleen Chawla, director of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, both urged FEMA in separate letters sent Friday to keep the Coliseum site running at its current capacity as the state builds up its vaccine supply.
“While the vaccine third party administrator, Blue Shield, projects an increase in vaccine in the future, meaningful increases in supply are not expected in the coming weeks,” Carson wrote.
The Coliseum site has been administering about 6,000 shots per day — or 42,000 per week — while the county administers between 15,000-17,000 doses each week, he said.
“Losing this additional vaccine abruptly at a time of expanded eligibility will mean significantly increased pressure on our County-administered sites,” he said, adding that “we are in a race against emerging viral variants.”
Chawla wrote that losing the federal vaccines even temporarily could “cause confusion and erode the trust and momentum we have built with community partners.”
City officials share that concern.
Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan, who sits on the board of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, said it took a big effort from local leaders and community organizations to connect the Coliseum site’s vaccine supply with residents most at risk of getting COVID-19.
“The state had been disproportionately vaccinating rich White people,” she said.
Saying that the Coliseum site had been serving affluent, White residents from outside of Oakland, community leaders have called for mobile vaccination clinics to bring the vaccines from the Coliseum to churches and other community hubs so they can be distributed more equitably.
The supply for those mobile units comes from FEMA’s vaccine supply to the Coliseum.
“Now that those systems are working … the decision (by FEMA to pull out) is, frankly, inexplicable,” Kaplan said.
She said local leaders would be fine with Alameda County taking over the vaccination site but fear the transition from FEMA could result in a temporary gap in vaccine supply, including to the mobile units.
Mobile trucks have been successful in “increasing access for African American and Latino residents and have helped build trust in communities that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic,” Chawla wrote to FEMA.
“The mission they came here to do is not yet accomplished, with no plan and no transition for anyone to take it over,” Kaplan said
Robert Barker, a FEMA spokesperson, told this news organization the federal agency “is prepared to leave all locally hired employees in place once a management transfer occurs” and would leave the mobile vaccination clinics there, while continuing to cover the costs.
But the letters from the Alameda County officials indicate they need more time to make the transition.
Until many more people are vaccinated, the job is not done, they say.