City leaders on Wednesday announced a new COVID-19 vaccine site that opened earlier this week in San Francisco's Visitacion Valley neighborhood in an effort to offer low-barrier vaccine access for some of the city's residents hardest-hit by the pandemic.
The new site at 1099 Sunnydale Ave. opened on Monday with a soft launch for the area's residents 18 years old and above.
The site will operate by appointment or drop-in from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Mondays through Wednesdays. Also on Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the site will operate a satellite vaccine site at the Sunnydale Community Wellness Center at 1652 Sunnydale Ave.
City officials are working on opening a third satellite site in the area in the coming weeks. The new site in Visitacion Valley is the fifth neighborhood vaccine site the city has opened, with others already operating in areas like the Mission, Bayview and Excelsior.
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"Visitacion Valley is home to a large population of essential workers and communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19," District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton said in a statement. "With this new neighborhood vaccination site, Visitacion Valley residents can have equitable access to the vaccine as we head towards reopening San Francisco."
"The network of low-barrier neighborhood vaccine sites we are setting up along the Sunnydale corridor is critical to reaching a community that is among the hardest hit in the city and where there is a lack of access to health care facilities," said Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
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Visitacion Valley has some of the city's highest numbers of COVID-19 cases since the onset of the pandemic, along with other underserved neighborhoods like the Bayview, Hunters Point, Tenderloin and the Mission.
According to data from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, so far, about 55 percent of residents in Visitacion Valley have already been vaccinated.
The new site was made possible through partnerships with community organizations like FACES SF, J and J Community Resource Center, the Samoan Community Development Center and Visit Health.
To make an appointment at the Visitacion Valley site, residents can call FACES SF at (415) 239-8705 or email kwu@facessf.org.
