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Los Angeles plans to turn its massive coronavirus testing site at Dodger Stadium into a vaccine distribution center this week, with officials hoping to vaccinate up to 12,000 people a day when the site is fully operational, officials said on Sunday evening. city and county.
Dodger Stadium is the nation’s largest test site, handling thousands of residents a day. The site has administered more than a million tests since May.
Testing operations at Dodger Stadium will end on Monday, according to a statement from Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office. City and county officials also plan to end testing at the Veterans Affairs Lot 15 site, near Jackie Robinson Stadium, in order to move staff, equipment and other resources to vaccine distribution. .
“Vaccines are the surest way to beat this virus and to lead the way towards a cure, so the city, county and our entire team are putting our best resources on the ground to get Angelenos vaccinated so quickly, safely and efficiently as possible, ”Garcetti said in the statement.
The county’s testing capacity will be temporarily reduced during the transition to sites, but the change will more than triple the daily number of vaccines available for Angelenos. The city plans to continue providing free testing to residents, with or without symptoms, at eight permanent and six mobile sites across Los Angeles. Over the next few weeks, testing will increase through existing sites, additional mobile sites and at Pierce College in Woodland Hills release said.
The transition to vaccine distribution comes as California and the rest of the country have been slow to administer COVID-19 vaccines.
Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday set a goal of administering vaccines to an additional 1 million people over the next nine days, acknowledging that the state’s efforts to distribute life-saving supplies have not been sufficient.
Although California had received more than 2 million doses of the vaccine, as of Friday, less than a third had been given to frontline healthcare workers and residents of eligible nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. at the first series of inoculations. .
The vaccine’s rollout has also been hampered by the reluctance of some frontline health workers to take it. According to county public health officials, about 20 to 40 percent of frontline workers in LA County who were offered the vaccine at year’s end refused to take it.
State officials recently expanded the scope of immunization eligibility, allowing teachers, educators and people over 75 to be vaccinated if there is a risk of expiring doses.
In LA County, 145,621 of the initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered – just over a third of those received – as of January 7, according to county public health data.
The announcement of the transition from Dodger Stadium to a vaccine distribution site was first reported by KNX-AM (1070).
California is also facing a continuing increase in deaths from COVID-19. As of Saturday evening, the state recorded an average of 451 deaths per day for the previous week, a record. On Sunday, the state eclipsed 30,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
LA County currently has an average of 211 COVID-19 deaths per day, a record as well.
Times editors Rong-Gong Lin II, Vanessa Martínez, Swetha Kannan and Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
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