The largest coronavirus vaccination site in California will be located in the heart of Silicon Valley and home to the San Francisco 49ers.
Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium will serve as a mass vaccination site with an initial capacity of 5,000 shots per day when it opens early next week, accelerating to 15,000 daily, the 49ers in collaboration with Santa Clara County.
“We recognize the urgent need for an effective and equitable vaccination effort for our community and are proud to work with Santa Clara County to put this vaccination site online as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said 49ers president Al Guido in a statement. “We have put all the resources at our disposal to meet this challenge to ensure that members of the community where we live every day can be vaccinated safely and quickly.”
The site of Levi’s Stadium will be operated by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department and open to all eligible county residents. Earlier this week, the county announced that all residents age 65 and older could book their appointments.
“The only way to overcome this pandemic is together, so I’m pleased to see this collaborative approach to vaccinating our residents on a large scale,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said in a statement. “Our county has a history of leading and opening California’s largest vaccination site in collaboration with the 49ers is just one more example of that.”
While Levi’s Stadium is not the first sports venue in the state to be used as a vaccination site, it will be larger once it is operational. In Southern California, Petco Park and Dodger Stadium have also been used to distribute vaccines. When the Dodger Stadium site was launched last month, Los Angeles officials expected it to reach a capacity of 12,000 daily shots.
In Oakland, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that the first large-scale federal vaccination site will be launched at Athletics ’home, the Oakland Coliseum.
The 49ers had previously offered Levi’s Stadium for use by the county, but county officials, while receptive to the offer, said the biggest hurdle to getting gunshots is less of a problem. distribution, but a lack of supply. Although the site will open with a capacity of 5,000 shots a day, it is planned to increase the pace to 15,000 a day “as vaccine supplies increase,” according to the press release.
Now, the organization’s supply is coming to fruition, and California’s largest vaccination site will be launched at its home early next week.