Garcetti Announces New COVID-19 Mobile Vaccine Initiative To Target Hard-Hit Communities Of Color
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."
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.
The goal is to administer 4,000 doses in communities of color in the first two weeks to health care workers and people 65 years and older, in line with county guidelines.
"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."
On Friday, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Council Member Kevin De León canvassed Boyle Heights to get the word out about the new program.
"Quite frankly the city of LA is the epicenter of coronavirus infections as well as the mortality rate in the country. We're in Boyle Heights, amazing neighborhood that actually is ground zero for infections and mortality," De León said.
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. "It's really critical we bring these doses where the outbreak is and that's my mission here."
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.
