Cars began lining up at San Francisco’s first mass vaccination site at 8 a.m. Friday at City College.
White tents were set up in the parking lot where patients could drive up and get a shot, not unlike the many drive-through testing sites that have popped up through the city. After they get their shot, patients can wait in their cars for 15 minutes to make sure they are feeling okay.
"This is the start of the end of this pandemic," said Mayor London Breed.
The site is part of the city’s ambitious goal to vaccinate every eligible resident by June 30. In order to reach that benchmark, the city will have to give 10,000 shots a day.
The city is currently administering about 3,000 shots a day, although supply has been spotty. 500 people will be vaccinated at the new site each day through Sunday, but what happens on Monday is still unclear because of how unpredictable the city's vaccine supply has been.
“What we have is not enough, what we have coming is not enough. We’re happy to have what we get, but we need more desperately,” said Breed.
City officials say if they had more doses, this site alone could be used to give 3,000 shots each day, and the city plans to open two more - once there is enough supply of the vaccine.
“If we get more than enough, where we can do more than 10,000 a day, we have the ability, we have the sites, we have the resources to ramp up," said Mayor Breed. "That’s the bare minimum.”
Other Bay Area leaders expressed their frustration with distribution issues at a COVID-19 town hall Thursday.
"We never know how many doses we’re going to have that far ahead, so sometimes we don’t even know we’re getting a shipment until the day before," said Dr. Mark Adams at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View. "I think if we can get more steady supply, we will happily vaccinate more people."
"It’s a distribution challenge. We want to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as we can, and we certainly have ramped up the ability to do that," said State Senator Josh Becker, who represents parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, echoing the message of Breed and other officials around the Bay Area.
Moscone Center and the SF Produce Market in the Bayview neighborhood are also set to become mass vaccination sites.
The sites are only available by appointment.
Related
