Newsom announces mass vaccination sites in Oakland, Los Angeles
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration announced Wednesday a pilot project to create community vaccination sites in Oakland and Los Angeles.
These sites, which will be based at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum and California State University, Los Angeles, are part of an effort to establish 100 vaccination sites nationwide in the Biden administration's first 100 days. They will be co-run by FEMA and Cal OES.
Newsom spoke from the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, alongside Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Dave Kaval, president of the Oakland A's on Wednesday morning about the new sites.
The locations were chosen to help to ensure communities that are typically left behind received vaccines, the governor said.
The site in Oakland will open on February 16, and Newsom said it would be specifically allocated additional vaccines from the federal government, with the goal of administering 6,000 doses daily.
He said the state would be receiving an additional 1,060,000 doses of the vaccine this week but recognized that low supply was affecting areas across the state.
Several vaccination sites across the state, including in the Central Valley, have had to pause administering the first doses of the vaccine due to short supply.
"(The) federal government doesn't have the doses to support states like ours at the scale we all would like to see. We are limited on the basis of supply," the governor said.
But Newsom added that while there's been a decline in coronavirus cases in the last month, the new COVID-19 variants are still a concern among health officials.
California has reported 150 cases of the UK COVID-19 variant, 960 cases of the West Coast variant and zero cases of the virus mutation from South Africa.
Newsom's Wednesday press conference also comes as the governor's approval rating drops. A recall petition started by Republicans before the pandemic continues to gain steam.
A poll released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found just over half of Californians - 54% - approve of how Newsom is handling the job, suggesting the recall effort still has an uphill climb.
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