COVID: Mass Vaccination Site At San Francisco's Moscone Center Set To Open
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – For the second day in a row the Bay Area is announcing a large-scale COVID-19 vaccination site.
The one at San Francisco's Moscone Center, which is set to open Friday, might actually be larger than the Oakland Coliseum effort announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials on Wednesday. It all depends on future vaccine deliveries.
As for getting an appointment here, that too may prove difficult to forecast.
"This major site will play a significant role in getting our city to a better place," Mayor London Breed announced Thursday.
The Moscone South vaccination site won't officially open until Friday, but a handful of people got jabbed in front of the cameras Thursday, just to kick things off.
Down in the main hall, the stage is set for this grand effort. With a little practice, health officials think they'll be able to move some 10,000 people through this facility every day.
Hitting that number that will take time.
"We will start tomorrow at 1,500, just to get things ramped up," explained Kaiser SF Medical Center Maria Ansari. "And then we'll be doing 3,000 to 4,000 every day through Thursday until we deplete supply and we hope to get more."
The vaccine supply will come from the state. To get an appointment as Moscone Center, everyone will have to go through the state's new website at myturn.ca.gov. That means the city does not get to make any decisions about who gets in line, but organizers say one population is likely to be prioritized.
"We're sticking to the tiers that the governor has announced," Ansari said. "But we know in a vaccine-constrained environment that the people who are at highest risk of dying are age 75 and greater."
So that is where things will start. But even with supply limiting the numbers in these early days or weeks, the staffing is all ready to go for that 10,000 per day capacity.
"The worst thing that could happen is that there's vaccine and there's no one to administer the vaccine," said Kaiser Permanente Chief Operating Officer of Care Delivery Janet Liang.
"So we are staffed and we're ready to go at the highest volume possible. We just need more vaccine," Liang went on to say.
