Rob AriasThe COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Alameda County is slowly ramping up with 154,000 doses received by the Public Health Department as of February 4. With two county-serving mass-vaccination sites poised to go online, these numbers should begin to rapidly escalate. But while capacity to administer the vaccine has improved, supply of the vaccine has not kept up to demand according to reports.
Of 154,000 doses received, 45,380 have been allocated to the county with 26,266 of these having already been administered according to the county dashboard. 79,270 of these have been allocated or redistributed to health care partners to administer.
Drive-Thru Mass Vaccination Site Opens at Golden Gate Fields Lot
Appointments for drive-thru COVID-19 vaccinations for Alameda County residents 75 and older will begin today. Vaccines will be administered in the parking lot at the foot of Buchanan Street at the Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Albany (near Albany Bulb).
The vaccinations are for those seeking their first dose and target the ages most vulnerable to hospitalization and death from COVID-19, officials said.
One of the biggest public complaints about the vaccine clinics has been the long and slow moving lines for seniors who have had to be on their feet for hours. Sites like the Albany location look to remedy this by allowing patients to wait in their vehicles.
Curative Inc., the vendor, will add those with appointments into its notification system for second appointments, officials said.
The form will ask about basic demographic information to confirm eligibility for an appointment and an email will be sent confirming the date and time of an appointment. A ride service supported by the city is available for a $15 fee to help senior and disabled Berkeley residents needing transportation to the site for their appointments.
Those who have an appointment time should check their eligibility, register for services, and schedule a ride by contacting Easy Does It at (510) 704-2111. Easy Does It will ask health screening questions to ensure to ensure the rider safety and the safety of the driver. Personal protective equipment is worn by drivers, and face coverings are required of riders.
Make an appointment online through curative.com.
Alameda County residents can sign up for vaccine alerts through this online form.
This is the line at the Stanford Medical clinic set up in Emeryville where healthcare workers and folks 65+ can receive the covid vaccine (once they set up an appointment). Our seniors deserve better. This line is ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/k7ZZTaGzhv
— Azucena Rasilla (@ChroniclesOfAzu) January 31, 2021
Stanford offering vaccines to Health Care Workers & Existing Patients 65+
The Stanford Medical clinic on Hollis is also offering vaccinations to those eligible.
Those eligible for the vaccine include:
- Health care workers who work in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, or Santa Clara county
- Patients who have received care at Stanford Health Care at least once in the last three years, are aged 65+, and live in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, or Santa Clara county.
Schedule your appointment online through Standford’s MyLife portal
OneMedical is also offering limited vaccines to eligible clients.
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Oakland Coliseum Set to Open Vaccination Site through State, Federal Partnership
The state of California plans to launch a pilot partnership with federal officials to establish a community COVID-19 vaccination site at the Oakland Coliseum, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.
The state will collaborate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to operate the Coliseum vaccination site, part of a goal of President Joe Biden’s administration to establish 100 large-scale vaccination sites nationwide in his first 100 days in office.
“The reason this site was chosen was the framework of making sure that communities that are often left behind are not left behind, they’re prioritized in terms of the administration of these vaccines,” Newsom said at a briefing at the Coliseum.
The state has already helped establish similar large-scale vaccination sites at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and Petco Park in San Diego.
The Coliseum is the first such site in the Bay Area and will have the capacity to administer some 6,000 doses per day once it opens on Feb. 16.
The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority’s Board of Commissioners, which oversees the property, and Oakland Athletics president Dave Kaval expressed interest last month in converting the Coliseum into a mass vaccination site, with Kaval targeting it to open as soon as February.
“We’ve obviously been hosting people here for generations to come to baseball games and football games and basketball games,” Kaval said Wednesday. “Now folks can come out, actually get their shot and get vaccinated.”
The Coliseum’s use as a vaccination site comes as California’s number of vaccine doses administered has surged in recent days, with nearly 3.8 million shots to date.
That has allowed the state to vault much closer to the national average of how much of its vaccine supply has been administered. Previously, California had been one of the slowest states in the country to distribute and administer its doses allocated from the federal government.
The state also recently contracted with Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente as third-party administrators of the vaccination effort and switched to an age-based prioritization for who gets vaccinated, targeting the state’s oldest residents first.
“There’s never been a time where partnership has been more needed than now,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said. “And this partnership between the federal government, our great governor … and local communities like Oakland and Alameda County is going to accelerate the delivery of vaccines and get us back to normal as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Newsom said the state is expected to receive 1,060,000 doses this week, but the federal stockpile of doses is still not equipped to adequately supply a state of California’s size.
“No one is satisfied with the pace of distribution of these vaccines,” Newsom said, noting that some parts of the state have had to cancel vaccination appointments due to a dearth of doses.
“Of course we have more work to do, but we have made demonstrable progress,” he said, “and we will continue to build on that over the course of the next days, weeks and months until we eradicate and eliminate this disease.”
Feature Image: Azucena Rasilla.
Portions of this story were provided by Bay City News reporter Eli Walsh.
