San Francisco opening three large COVID vaccination sites

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco announced its plan with healthcare providers to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine.

The city is working with Kaiser Permanente, UCSF Health, Dignity Health, Sutter Health/California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and the Department of Public Health, which provides healthcare to the uninsured and underinsured, to ensure these facilities have everything in place to activate and begin offering vaccinations as soon as they receive sufficient vaccine supply.

The sites will open and scale based on the amount of vaccine doses health care providers receive.

The three large-scale sites will open at the following locations:

SoMa: Moscone Center
OMI/Sunnyside: City College of San Francisco (Main Campus)
Bayview: The SF Market (San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market)

Starting Jan. 19, people who live and work in San Francisco can sign up and be notified when they become eligible under state guidance to receive the vaccine by visiting the city’s vaccination notification website.

All of the current vaccines that the city has received have been administered or assigned, officials said in a press conference Friday.

As soon as health care providers receive sufficient vaccine allocations from the state and federal government sites will be created to scale-up capacity as vaccine supply increases. Once the vaccine locations are fully operational, pending vaccine supply, the city has a goal of facilitating 10,000 vaccine doses per day.

“We are doing everything we can to help get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” said Mayor London Breed. “The vaccine is the most important tool we have to end this pandemic once and for all, and getting people protected from this virus is our top priority. By creating these vaccination locations with our private healthcare partners and continuing our efforts to serve the highest-need residents by bringing the vaccine to them, we can all work together to move the vaccine more quickly as supply increases. We need more vaccines now, and we will be ready when they do arrive.”

The city is also working with One Medical, Safeway, and Walgreens to deliver vaccines as doses become available, as well as mobile vaccination teams to reach vulnerable populations.

San Francisco General Hospital is also upscaling its vaccination effort this weekend to get its 110,000 annual patient population the shots.

The Bay Area region’s ICU availability has increased this week, giving hope that restrictions could be lifted soon.

The state has a 15% region wide ICU capacity baseline for whether regions would be under lockdown or not. In the Bay Area, it dropped as low as 0.7% last week before bouncing back to 4.7% by Tuesday.

Officials said the stay-at-home order would last indefinitely, as early January data trends were looking dire. However, the state’s rate of hospitalizations are beginning to decline.

At last check, California has 2,859,624 confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in 32,291 deaths, as well as 21,856 patients hospitalized.

While the numbers can seem scary, individual counties within the Bay Area are doing better.

Latest ICU bed availability by region: