January 18, 2021 by CALmatters
(CALMATTERS) – The chaos and confusion many Californians experienced this week in their search for a COVID-19 vaccine only intensified today as Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed that the state would not receive an additional supply of doses it was counting on to accelerate vaccination.
A temporary COVID-19 vaccine super site is set up at the north of the Toy Story Parking Lot at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA, on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Newsom said he, like other governors, expected about 50 million doses to be released from storage by the feds in the next few days. “And then we read, as everybody else, that they have reneged or … are unable to deliver on that,” he said at a news conference unveiling a new mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium.
Going Big: How Stadiums Are Being Used In The Fight Against COVID-19
KEY POINTS
President-elect Biden wants 100 million people vaccinated in his first 100 days
Unlike the polio campaign in the 1950s, the effort is troubled by a trust deficit
Looking at the slow pace of providing inoculations against COVID-19, state and local leaders are starting to open up stadiums and other large facilities as mass vaccination sites, though guidelines on social distancing could complicate the effort.
President-elect Joe Biden, in an address to the nation on Thursday, said he aimed to have 100 million people injected with their first shots of the two-shot regime by the end of his first 100 days in office on April 30.
In the first weeks of the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history, Dr. Julie Vaishampayan has had a battlefront view of a daunting logistical operation. Her charge is to see that potentially lifesaving COVID-19 shots make it into the arms of 550,000 residents. And like her dozens of counterparts across the state, she is improvising as she goes.
States are ramping up their Covid-19 vaccination programs so more people can be protected against the virus, but some governors are confused and angry because they don't know how much vaccine the federal government will send them.