Crews on Friday began prepping the Oakland Coliseum parking lot to serve as a mass COVID-19 vaccination center as part of a pilot program announced last week by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration.
Workers were erecting massive tents, some designed for walk-up patients and some for drive-up patients, in the vast lot that will become Alameda County's largest vaccination center. The site is scheduled to open Tuesday and is expected to provide at least 6,000 shots a day.
Registration for vaccine appointments at the site will be available through the state’s MyTurn scheduling system, the governor's office said.
The Coliseum, home to the Oakland Athletics, is one of two sites chosen for the pilot program in California, with the other at California State University, Los Angeles. The centers are operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in conjunction with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
The locations are in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. They are also in areas near where many essential workers reside, the governor's office said.
The Coliseum site will be paired with two mobile vaccination clinics, which can be deployed to multiple areas in the immediate community to amplify and provide distribution to areas that otherwise lack sufficient support, the governor's office said.
Local
The state assured that the vaccine doses used at the Coliseum will not decrease the vaccine supply at other sites in Alameda County.
