Educators Receive COVID-19 Vaccines At Duarte Clinic As LA County Ramps Up Administration Efforts
DUARTE (CBSLA) -- More than 700 educators lined up outside the Duarte Performing Arts Center on Saturday morning to receive their COVID-19 vaccines.
City of Hope National Medical Center helped administer doses and the invite-only clinic, which targeted eight neighboring school districts that are trying to get their teachers fully vaccinated.
Amy Sotelo, a teacher in the Baldwin Park School district, showed up to get her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
"I hate working from home and I miss my kids," she said. "I wanna go back to work."
Of getting the vaccine, she added: "At first I was kind of skeptical but then I saw other people were getting and no big reactions, [so] I realized I'm good with getting it."
Eric Moses said he didn't hesitate when he was offered an appointment.
"I think once everyone is vaccinated, we will start seeing more fun things we all can do together again," he said.
This week Los Angeles County will continue its push to get educators vaccinated in hopes of opening schools, which is why City of Hope helped host the clinic.
"This has been a difficult year for everyone and we want to have a hand in getting back to normal," said Dr. Vijay Trisal, City of Hope Chief Medical Officer.
The Los Angeles Department of Public Health announced this week that more than 2,415,000 doses of vaccine have been administered across the county, including 814,593 second doses — an increase of 456,913 administered doses in the past week.
Next week, the county is expected to receive another 312,000 vaccine doses — the largest weekly shipment to date — that will include 53,700 doses of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
"As thousands more residents and workers are vaccinated, it remains important to continue to wear masks and keep distance when around others," Dr. Barbara Ferrer, county public health director, said. "Vaccines offer powerful protection against serious disease and death for the vaccinated person; it is not yet known if people who are vaccinated can become infected and pass the virus on to others."
L.A. County's chief science officer, Paul Simon, told CBSLA that he believed the county's vaccine supply will continue to increase.
"We're not quite sure of the pace," he said.