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California Disneyland opened a giant coronavirus vaccination center on Wednesday, about 10 months after the outbreak of the pandemic that forced the closure of the world-famous theme park.
The few hundred patients who were lucky enough to book online appointments made their way to the Anaheim station parking lot Wednesday morning, where people over 65 and healthcare workers are vaccinated in tents white.
“Today, for many people who get vaccinated, this is truly the happiest place on Earth,” said Lisa Bartlett, Orange County Supervisor, referring to the famous Disney descriptor.
The county near Los Angeles announced that Disneyland would host its first “super POD” vaccination site (distribution point) on Monday night, and received 10,000 registrations in the first two hours on Tuesday.
“Easy – piece of cake, nothing like that. I didn’t even feel it come in,” Gary Dohman, an 81-year-old lung cancer patient, said after being injected with Moderna.
“I’ve been locked in a house for 10 months, I can’t go anywhere. I want to take my second photo and travel a bit.”
California’s slow vaccine rollout has been widely criticized, with one of the lowest per capita inoculation rates in the United States.
State officials said on Wednesday that the previous strict eligibility criteria would immediately be expanded to include all over 65s – a move Orange County, where Disneyland is located, had already initiated.
“The state’s rollout of the vaccine has been a bit disappointing,” supervisor Donald Wagner said at a press conference.
Disney, Orange County’s largest employer, and other partner companies have “come together to take over,” he said.
The site will soon administer more than 7,000 snapshots a day, officials said.
Throughout the summer and fall, when cases of Covid plunged into Southern California, Disney and other theme park operators bristled with restrictions that did not allow them to reopen, even under strict security protocols, even as other companies got back to work.
The entire region subsequently returned to “home” orders in early December, shutting down most businesses again.
California, initially hailed for its handling of the pandemic, has become the epicenter of the virus in recent weeks. The state passed 30,000 deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday, with cases having more than doubled since early December to 2.75 million.
Supervisor Doug Chaffee expressed hope that the vaccination campaign “will allow us to bring tourism back, I hope, especially to places like Disneyland”, as well as reopen schools and other businesses.
Orange County aims to vaccinate “all residents” by July 4, as part of its “independence operation,” supervisor Andrew Do said.
So far, 170,000 doses have been attributed to it, for a population of over 3 million inhabitants.
Mitra Fard, pushing his newly vaccinated 83-year-old mother in a wheelchair out of the tents, said there was a “long line” and an extra hour of delay.
“But for the number of people, the number of cars, they do a great job. I’m really impressed,” she said.
“We’re ready to go get a big, juicy steak.”
amz / caw
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