The Long Beach Department of Public Health gave the university 1,170 doses for the first round of vaccinations that began Tuesday.
“Because of our size and the fact that we have health care providers here on campus, this could be a vaccination site to take care of the city within a city if you want from the state of Long Beach,” said Jeff Cook, head of communications at CSULB.
The university uses public health guidelines to determine who will get the vaccine first, starting with those currently working on campus.
“We will then move on to those that are older and may have high-risk conditions, and ultimately our hope is, of course, to move from the rest of our employees to students.”
Matt Evans, a member of campus IT staff, said he is grateful to have received a vaccine before.
“Very impressive that you know because everyone else is having a hard time getting it,” Evans said.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia says that while the start of vaccinations is encouraging for the reopening of face-to-face classes in the fall, he says the university still needs thousands more doses to vaccinate the more 6,000 campus teachers.
“The big problem right now is supply, so we just need the feds to get more vaccines in states and cities. Obviously we didn’t have much of a plan a few months ago. Things are getting a little better now, but I hope that during in the coming weeks vaccine administrations will begin to be produced across the country, ”Garcia said.
Cal State Long Beach is what is called a “closed pod,” so only college employees and students will receive the COVID vaccine.
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