The Californer - San Francisco Launches First High-Volume COVID-19 Vaccination Site

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San Francisco, CA — Mayor London N. Breed and Director of Health Dr. Grant Colfax today announced the launch of the first high-volume vaccination site in San Francisco, which is part of the City's plan to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible. The new vaccination site is located at City College of San Francisco's main campus on Ocean Avenue in the Oceanview, Merced Heights, Ingleside (OMI) neighborhood. This location, which is operated by the City and staffed in partnership with UCSF Health, is the first of three high-volume vaccination sites announced by Mayor Breed last week.

Two additional high-volume vaccination sites will be located at the Moscone Center in SoMa and the SF Market in the Bayview. These high-volume sites will serve anyone eligible to receive the vaccine regardless of health coverage (by appointment only) and are part of San Francisco's planned network of vaccination sites to facilitate the quick and efficient delivery of COVID-19 vaccines.

The high-volume vaccination sites, like the new site at City College, will be complemented by targeted efforts to ensure communities most highly-impacted by COVID-19 receive equitable access to the vaccine. These targeted efforts include mobile vaccination teams, community vaccination sites, San Francisco Department of Public Health's community clinics, and other safety net clinics in neighborhoods such as Chinatown, the Mission, the Western Addition, and the Bayview.

"Large vaccination sites like this one at City College are going to be critical for getting people vaccinated quickly and safely, and getting our City on the road to recovery. This is an all-hands effort where we are working with our health care partners and City College to create a site that will be able to handle thousands of vaccinations per day once we have vaccine doses we need," said Mayor Breed. "San Francisco has a plan and we are ready to distribute 10,000 doses per day once we have enough vaccine. To fully deliver this plan, we need more vaccine and we will continue to do everything we can to be ready when our supply of vaccine does increase."

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The City College high-volume vaccination site will begin with an initial launch to test operations, establish successful processes, and ensure safety for patients and workers. Appointments are required and will remain limited in the short-term due to extremely constrained and unpredictable vaccine supply coming to San Francisco. The launch of this site will allow the City and UCSF to effectively build the vaccination infrastructure needed so that when more vaccine supply is available it can be quickly, efficiently, and equitably distributed.

The City College vaccination site will operate from 8:00 am – 4:00 pm this Friday 1/22, Saturday 1/23 and Sunday 1/24, by appointment only. The hours for the week of January 25, 2021 will be determined based on vaccine supply.

Due to the limited vaccine supply at this time, appointments at the City College site will initially be available by invitation only and will follow the prioritization criteria required by the State. Once vaccine supply increases, the site will scale up, and anyone who lives or works in San Francisco and who is eligible for vaccination will be able to access the vaccine at this site regardless of their health coverage status or provider. While vaccine supply remains the limiting factor in the short-term, the site will have the capacity to vaccinate more than 3,000 people per day once fully operational.

"The opening of the City College site is an important milestone in our mass vaccination effort, which will, in time, bring this terrible pandemic to an end," said Dr. Grant Colfax, Director, San Francisco Department of Public Health. "While vaccine supply coming to San Francisco remains extremely limited, this site, and the other high volume vaccination sites that will be opening in the coming weeks will provide the physical space, medical personnel, and logistical processes to efficiently deliver the vaccine when it becomes available."

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There are more than 210,000 people in San Francisco who are eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in the first phase (Phase 1A) and people 65 and older. Each person must receive two doses; therefore, San Francisco health care providers need at least 420,000 doses to complete Phase 1A and vaccinate people 65 and older. However, as of January 20, the Department of Public Health and private health care providers have received only a quarter of those doses.

"As with all of our COVID response efforts over the past year, quickly establishing the City College high volume vaccination site has been an exercise in collaboration, urgency, and science-driven decision making. It has taken significant coordination between different City agencies and City College of San Francisco, as well as our partners at UCSF. I'm proud of the role that the COVID Command Center played in leading this coordination and we will continue to ensure that all available resources are deployed to our shared goal of quickly and equitably distributing the vaccine," said Mary Ellen Carroll, Executive Director of the Department of Emergency Management.

"With the launch of this mass vaccination program, Mayor Breed and the San Francisco Department of Public Health are providing the critical leadership that has made the City a model for managing the pandemic," said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood. "As our community waits for vaccine supplies to become more widely available, UCSF is prepared to support San Francisco in vaccinating the City's residents, focusing first on those who are most vulnerable to this disease."

"City College is honored to have been chosen as a partner for the mass distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine," said Rajen Vurdien, Interim Chancellor of City College of San Francisco. "This pandemic has wreaked havoc in our communities, so we are ready to collaboratively contribute to keeping our communities healthy by providing the City of San Francisco access to our Ocean Campus."

Earlier this week, Mayor Breed announced the launch of a webpage for people who live and work in San Francisco to enter their information and be notified once they are eligible to be vaccinated. People who live and work in San Francisco can sign-up for vaccine notification at sf.gov/vaccinenotify.

Filed Under: Government, City

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