Three new COVID-19 vaccination sites are opening up in San Diego county this week. The new clinics are opening in areas most affected by the pandemic.
One clinic will be in the Mountain View Educational Complex in southeast San Diego. It will open Tuesday morning with the ability to deliver 500 vaccines. Health officials say it can ramp up to a thousand vaccines a day. This center will be open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and replaces another site in the area that could only deliver 100 vaccines per day.
A second clinic will open in Escondido on Tuesday, at the North Inland First United Methodist Church. This site can administer 250 vaccines a day and will also be open 9:30 a.m.to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The third location will be a one-day, first-come first-served, no appointment clinic at the Sherman Heights Community Center on Wednesday, March 31st. It will be open to those who live in the 92102 and 92113 ZIP codes, with a total of 300 doses expected to be delivered.
District 1 County Supervisor Nora Vargas noted the Sherman Heights clinic will be open on Cesar Chavez Day. “If anything, we know that he fought every day for workers, and that’s who is the heart of this community are working families. So, I’m excited that we’re going to be able to bring this particular pilot program to them,” she said.
But even as community clinics open, Scripps Health announced Monday that the vaccine superstation at the Del Mar Fairgrounds will be closed on Wednesday, and next weekend, because it received a low number of vaccine deliveries.
Dr. Ghazala Sharieff, Chief Medical Officer-Acute Care at Scripps Health, said they are still optimistic about getting more vaccines. She told KPBS, “We think that if we get the vaccines that are promised from what I’m hearing through our routes of communication, we should almost get double of what we’re currently receiving as a state by the middle of April. If that’s the case we can really start running with the vaccination program.”
