People vaccinated in mid-January were automatically slotted into appointments for most of the city's anticipated weekly supply of 54,000 Moderna doses and 4,000 Pfizer doses, a prioritization that the city said complied with directives by county and federal health officials.
Just 4,600 doses will be set aside for initial immunizations and will be administered at Pierce College and at mobile clinics in hard-hit sections of South and East L.A.
Thousands more are expected to get their initial dose on the campus of Cal State L.A., where a site jointly run by the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is to begin operations Tuesday.
That site will have the capacity to vaccinate up to 6,000 people daily and is part of a Biden administration effort to roll out 100 vaccination sites nationwide in the first 100 days of the president's term. The Cal State site and a second one at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum were selected, Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week, to focus on underserved areas devastated by the virus and ensure "communities that are often left behind are not left behind."
Meanwhile, teachers and other L.A. Unified School District employees will get their first designated vaccination site Wednesday. The operation at the Roybal Learning Center near downtown will be available to district staff age 65 and older along with those assigned to work at immunization sites.
About 6 million vaccine doses have been administered in California with just under 1.5 million in L.A. County. The virus is on the decline nationally and across the state. Over the past week, the daily average of new cases in California has fallen by 51% versus two weeks ago.
At the peak of infections last month, the county was averaging 241 related deaths per day. The county recorded 82 related deaths Sunday, though the number might have been affected by weekend reporting delays.
Even with the encouraging data, public health officials are pleading for more vaccine doses.
San Francisco's Department of Public Health bemoaned the supply in a statement Sunday as "limited, inconsistent and unpredictable." The city has closed the Moscone Center vaccination site for a week and limited a high-volume site at City College to second doses.
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement Monday, "Our city has the tools, the infrastructure, and the determination to vaccinate Angelenos swiftly and safely — we simply need more doses."
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(Times staff writers Howard Blume and Adam Elmahrek contributed to this report.)
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