With supply low, San Francisco pauses vaccines at major site
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco is the latest California city to temporarily shutter a mass vaccination site due to lack of vaccine, joining Los Angeles in pausing inoculations amid a national shortage.
Mass vaccinations are on hold at the Moscone convention center for a week until supply ramps up, officials announced Sunday. They also said vaccinations at City College of San Francisco will stop this week, and restart Friday only for second dose appointments.
San Francisco plans to go ahead with opening a third high- volume vaccination site this week in the hard-hit Bayview neighborhood but will do so with fewer appointments. Officials say they have delivered at least one dose to nearly half of city residents 65 and older.
“I’m frustrated because we’ve shown that SF can administer shots as soon as they come in,” Mayor London Breed said on social media. “We’re hoping for more info in the next few days. We’ll maintain enough doses to ensure second shots for people on schedule.”
Many cities and counties in California are crying for more vaccine, saying they have the ability to deliver it to residents.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he knows they can. Nearly 6 million doses have been administered throughout California. The state is receiving roughly 1 million doses a week, with a significant share reserved for second shots, Newsom said.
“Supply is the issue. That’s the constraint,” Newsom said last week. “So when you ask me, ‘ what are we doing to vaccinate this group, that
group, what about this group,’ it’s an issue now of scarcity, it’s an issue of supply.”
On Friday, after weeks of heavy lobbying, his administration opened up vaccine access to younger people with disabilities and certain medical conditions beginning in midMarch.
The hope is that vaccine supply will greatly expand with the Biden administration, which has started sending vaccine directly to pharmacies and to new mass vaccination sites in the state.
On Tuesday, two new large- scale vaccination sites will open in Oakland and in East Los Angeles as part of a partnership between the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The federal government will supply the vaccine, which could be as many as 6,000 shots a day at each loca
tion.
The locations were picked with an eye toward equity, said Newsom, and slots will be reserved for people in surrounding areas. Residents can use My Turn, a new statewide tool, to register and make appointments.
Also, the state is switching to a more centralized vaccine system this week that promises to speed up and streamline delivery. Details of the state’s contract with insurer Blue Shield, which will run the program, were expected to be revealed Monday.
The mass vaccination site at Moscone opened less than two weeks ago with high hopes to inoculate as many as 10,000 people a day. Its initial supply came from Kaiser Permanente, which had been tasked by the governor with administering 85,000 doses at Moscone and at Cal Poly Pomona from unused shipments that had gone to CVS
Pharmacy, Kaiser said.
Local officials are struggling to maintain doses for large-scale sites while getting vaccines to harder-hit neighborhoods, which are largely working class and heavily Black or Latino.
Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city of 4 million people would get only 16,000 shots for the week, 90,000 fewer than the week before and about the total the city normally administers each day. As a result, the city has closed for several days its large vaccination site at Dodger Stadium and at four other locations.
The rates of new coronavirus infections and hospitalizations continue to fall across California, but the state’s death toll remains persistently high. The state on Sunday reported another 408 deaths, bringing the total since the outbreak began to more than 46,840 — the highest in the nation.