San Francisco is set to be able to vaccinate 10,000 people per day as soon as vaccine supplies catch up, with the city's third mass-vaccination site now open at the SF Market (the wholesale produce market at 901 Rankin Street) in the Bayview.
The city has partnered with its three biggest private healthcare providers on the three sites, with UCSF helping the city to run the drive-up vaccine clinic at City College of San Francisco, and Kaiser Permanente partnering on the Moscone Center clinic that opened on February 5. Sutter Health is the partner for the Bayview clinic, which Mayor London Breed says brings the potential for thousands of vaccines per day to one of the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods in the pandemic.
The SF Market site opened Monday, as KPIX reports, just over a week after a drop-in vaccine site opened specifically for elderly neighborhood residents at the Southeast Health Center.
"With this site at the SF Market, we’re bringing access to the vaccine closer to people who live in the Bayview Hunters Point area and the southeast of the city," said Breed in a statement. "Throughout this pandemic, we’ve made sure our City’s response to COVID-19 is equitable, and we’re continuing that work by locating vaccination sites in the communities that have been hit the hardest. Supply remains very limited right now, but we’re making sure that we have the infrastructure in place throughout our city, and we’re prepared to vaccinate at least 10,000 people per day once we start receiving more doses."
Breed expressed frustration on Twitter on Sunday about having to temporarily halt operations at the Moscone Center and City College vaccine sites, due to lack of vaccine supplies. She said that after the Moscone Center site got rolling last week, San Francisco was able to vaccinate an average of 7,000 people per day. Today she revised that in a quote published by the Chronicle, saying the city was averaging 4,000 per day.
"We’re playing catch up here in trying to get these vaccines produced, and that’s a whole process,” Breed said. “They don’t just fall out of the sky or they can’t just be produced in your backyard."
City health officials issued a statement Sunday saying, "The vaccine supply coming to San Francisco’s healthcare providers and the Department of Public Health is limited, inconsistent, and unpredictable, making vaccine roll out difficult and denying San Franciscans this potentially life-saving intervention."
Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of the city's Department of Emergency Management, is now expressing doubt about the city reaching its goal of vaccinating all residents by June, telling the Chronicle it's more likely now to be late July.
The City College site is expected to reopen Friday for second doses only, and the city says that no second-dose appointments have been canceled.
While these sites are "on pause," the SF Department of Public Health reiterated the news on Twitter today (announced last week) that residents of zip codes 94107, 94110, 94112, 94124, and 94134 who are over age 65 can now drop in for vaccines without an appointment as SF General as well as at the Southeast Health Center.
Next week, San Francisco is supposed to open vaccine eligibility up for tens of thousands more residents, as grocery store and restaurant workers, along with teachers and emergency services personnel, all become eligible under Phase 1b.
Photo: SFDPH/Twitter