LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Mayor Eric Garcetti Thursday announced a new initiative to scale up mobile vaccination sites across vulnerable areas of Los Angeles.
“We are in a race against time, a race between infections and injections, and anything that slows down our progress is unacceptable,” he said. “Simply put, this is a reflection of the fact that Los Angeles isn’t receiving enough vaccines from the federal government to meet our daily capacity.”
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And despite the lack of vaccine doses being shipped to Los Angeles due to winter storms across the nation, causing the closure of city-run sites, Garcetti said mobile equity sites would continue to distribute vaccines to hard-hit areas Friday and Saturday.
The new initiative — Mobile Outreach for Vaccine Equity, or MOVE — will scale up mobile vaccinations across vulnerable areas of Los Angeles by deploying 10 mobile vaccination teams in hard-hit areas by the end of March.
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“When we get the supply in the coming weeks — and make no mistake, we will get that supply — we will be able to scale and have the capacity to vaccinate tens of thousands of people each week,” Garcetti said. “MOVE teams have already begun to vaccinate Angelenos across the city.”
Garcetti also announced the Dodger Stadium mass vaccination site would have an express lane for people with disabilities starting Monday.
“Bottom line, your abilities, your ethnicity, your geography none of these should be a barrier to you getting a vaccine,” he said.
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The mayor also announced that Angelenos would no longer have to make appointments to get a COVID-19 test at city-run sites starting Monday.