COVID-19 vaccine site at Los Angeles Dodger Stadium, along with four other city venues, will be temporarily closed due to massive shortages Eric Garcetti
Eric Garcetti Los Angeles Vaccination Site Temporarily Closed Protesters LA Mayor Receives First Dose of Coronavirus Vaccine After Spending Days at Super Grammys Post Postponed by Coronavirus Concerns MORE (D) said.
The mayor announced Wednesday that the five traffic and access points to the city will be closed from Friday for at least two days. The sites could reopen on Tuesday or Wednesday, he predicted.
Garcetti considered the supply of vaccines provided to the city, which will run out on Thursday, to be “unpredictable”, “uneven” and “unacceptable”. He noted that Los Angeles received 16,000 new doses this week, slightly more than the total he administers per day. Los Angeles received 90,000 doses last week and 29,000 doses the previous week, he added.
“We’re vaccinating people faster than the new roads coming here in Los Angeles and right now I’m very concerned,” the mayor said during a press conference.
“This is a huge hurdle in our race to vaccinate Angelenos,” he added.
Garcetti stressed that the scheduled second doses will not be affected, but “will prevent us from moving forward with new first doses.”
He said he didn’t want to “point fingers,” but noted that other cities with smaller populations than Los Angeles receive more doses.
“I don’t want to do a single dose, but it’s fair for Los Angeles to receive a steady supply to meet the moment of our need,” he added.
The city will keep open the mobile sites it deployed in southern Los Angeles, where a disproportionate number of residents have been infected and killed by COVID-19.
Overall, Los Angeles has administered 293,252 vaccines with an average of 13,051 daily inoculations.
Rises in cases, deaths and hospitalizations in late December and early January have since begun to decline in Los Angeles, according to county data.
The county has an average seven-day positivity rate of 8.4 percent, down from the 20 percent recorded around New Year’s Day, but still above the 5 percent threshold that experts want to see before consider reopening.