California’s largest mass-vaccination site opens at San Francisco 49ers stadium

The San Francisco 49ers’s Levi’s Stadium opened on Tuesday as the largest mass-vaccination site in California.

The site is expected to offer as many as 15,000 COVID-19 vaccine shots per day. However, it will start with a more limited goal of 5,000 daily inoculations by next week due to vaccine supplies, California officials and medical professionals confirmed at a press conference on Tuesday.

The stadium will first serve Santa Clara County residents who are over 65 years old, health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. It will be operated the county’s health system. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said that the state is dealing with an “issue now of scarcity” in receiving vaccines from the federal government and distributing the shots across the state. 

“It’s an issue of supply,” Newsom told reporters.

He also emphasized the mass vaccinations in the state can help California reopen some schools for in-person learning amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our default and our priority is to get our kids safely back to schools,” he said, adding that the state is hoping to get younger students in kindergarten through the sixth grade into classrooms.

The 49ers announced last week that health officials would launch the vaccination site at the stadium.

“We recognize the urgent need for an effective and equitable vaccination effort for our community and are proud to partner with the County of Santa Clara to bring this vaccination site online as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said 49ers President Al Guido said in a Friday statement.

“We have brought every resource at our disposal to bear on this challenge to ensure members of the community we live in each and every day can be vaccinated safely and quickly.” 

California has seen a decline in new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, alongside states across the country. The state reported 13,586 cases on Monday and 288 fatalities, according to the New York Times tracker. Newsom also noted Monday that the state is carefully watching cases involving new COVID-19 variants.