SF Opens First Community Vaccination Site In Mission District

San Francisco CA

01 February, 2021

5:35 PM

Description

By Annika Hom and Lydia Chávez, Mission Local February 1, 2021 With the smell of burning sage in the air, the city's first community vaccination site opened today at 9 a.m. in the heart of the Mission District, just off 24th and Mission streets in a rectangular, fenced-in parking lot cleared of cars, planted with four large white tents and staffed with technicians and nurses ready to vaccinate in a community that has had some of the city's highest rates of Covid-19 cases. The opening was a triumph of UCSF and the Latino Task Force as well as the Department of Public Health, which will eventually take over the site and open in other impacted communities, first in Bayview and then in other neighborhoods, according to DPH. After a soft launch this week offering only 120 vaccines a day, the Mission site will run four days a week – Sunday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and – depending on supplies – may ramp up to as many as 400 vaccines a day. Across the street at the BART Plaza the Unidos en Salud coalition will continue to run rapid Covid-19 testing during the same hours. It will resume again on Wednesday. Dr. Diane Havlir, professor of medicine at UCSF and a co-founder of Unidos en Salud, the partnership between UCSF and the Latino Task Force that has been running testing and research studies in the Mission since mid-April, wrote early this morning that taking this step made her feel, "Hopeful – that with partnerships we can accelerate vaccine access. And hopeful, when supply increases, that we will be ready." "It's surreal," said Jon Jacobo, the head of the Latino Task Force, as he walked up to the site an hour before the first person would be vaccinated. "Seeing it. Wow. This is huge. A milestone. One that happened only because of trust in all the partners, the community, UCSF and the city; trust in a community-led effort." An hour later, he was burning sage and greeting community health workers with the exuberance of a kid on Christmas morning. Throughout the early morning, the volunteers, doctors and technicians who have been involved with the Unidos en Salud campaigns from the beginning entered the site to attend to last-minute details. "I couldn't sleep last night," said Chesa Cox from UCSF as she hung out the sign announcing the vaccinations. Doctors Havlir and Carina Marquez, generally in jeans and puff vests or jackets, arrived in skirts and heels, ready for the arrival later in the morning of Mayor London Breed and Director of Public Health Grant Colfax. Diane Jones, a retired HIV nurse and leader in the effort, bicycled up and others like Susana and Susy Rojas arrived on foot. "It's just really exciting to get to this point," said Marquez. James Peng, from UCSF who has also been involved since the start in April agreed. It's what they have been waiting for, he said. Early on, the Unidos en Salud studies offered clues as to the nature of the virus and the reasons why the Latinx population accounted for so many of the city's cases: many of the carriers were asymptomatic, unable to shelter in place and often lived in crowded conditions where the virus was easily transmitted. These attributes translated into an epidemic in the Latinx population, which represents only 15 percent of the city's population, but has accounted for anywhere from 42 to 50 percent of total San Francisco cases over the course of the pandemic. Testing working-class Latinx residents has been at the forefront of the Unidos en Salud coalition for the last year, and today's vaccination site has been in the works for weeks, calling on the fundraising might of UCSF and the Latino Task Force, more vaccine supply, permitting, and orchestration from DPH. "We're going to do this," Jacobo said on a recent Thursday as he got on a call to help raise money. And they did. As Jacobo, Havlir and UCSF Chancellor Dr. Sam Hawgood facilitated efforts over numerous phone calls, the donors stepped up. These include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the McKinnon Family Foundation, Carl Kawaja and Wendy Holcombe, and donors to the UCSF COVID-19 Response Fund and the Unidos en Salud/United in Health San Francisco Project, according to the campaign's press release. "By continuing our collaborative community testing programs, and now making vaccines available in high-impact neighborhoods where the virus is spreading quickly, we can prevent more suffering and help to protect the entire city from this virus," Hawgood said in the press release. Already, Havlir added, they knew from a recent survey of more than 6,000 people that the hard to reach Latinx residents they were testing for Covid-19, were anxious for a vaccine. This week, the site will get off to a slow start, first vaccinating – by appointment – community healthcare workers during Monday and Tuesday. Then, shots will open up to the public by appointment if they are 65 or older, or a healthcare worker who has not been vaccinated by their employer. Already, they are notifying residents from their database of people they have tested who are 65 years and older. The campaigns have tested some 30,000 people and 55 percent of those tested do not have health insurance; another 10 percent who have health insurance are not connected to a provider. The Unidos campaign will follow the state's guidelines on who can be tested, but it will be able to draw from its database to test those unable to go through private insurers. The UCSF/Latino Task Force testing and research campaigns have had low-barrier, walk-up testing at their core, so operating as an appointment site had everyone "hyperventilating" said Jones, the former UCSF nurse. To ensure access, the team has a table set up to help the eligible – for now health care workers and those over 65 – to register for an appointment in person. That need was visible on Monday morning before the site opened as an older gentleman walking with a cane approached the table. He had been notified that he could go online and register, but he could not navigate the online process. "This is the perfect example of why this is needed ," said Jones. And just after the site opened up, seven people were in line trying to get on the list for vaccinations. Others, who already had appointments, waited quietly along the fence. Two tents are set up with multiple chairs for vaccinations. This week, the site is using the Moderna vaccination and giving those who get it, the appointment for the second dose. "My dream is eventually that people can come and get tested (at the 24th BART Plaza rapid testing) and go across the street and get vaccinated. If they are positive they go into the response arm, they get support during isolation and when they are safe we move them into the vaccination arm." Mayor London Breed and Dr. Grant Colfax, the director of public health, are expected to visit the site at 10:30 a.m. Breed said in a press release, "This vaccination site represents an important step forward in providing convenient, culturally competent vaccine access to the Mission District." Added Colfax: "As a community-based site co-located with existing testing capacity, the 24th Street site is a model for how we can reach every community in San Francisco." The city envisions the Mission District site as the first of many community vaccination sites in neighborhoods that have been disproportionately impacted by the virus. "It's by the people for the people," said Norma Ruiz, who works for Mission Girls and volunteers at the Latino Task Force's Hub. She arrived today to put her name on a list for a vaccine. "It's great having it accessible to our community." 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