The largest coronavirus vaccination site in California is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and the home of the San Francisco 49ers.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara will serve as a massive vaccination site with an initial capacity of 5,000 injections per day when it opens early next week, eventually increasing to 15,000 per day, the 49ers announced Friday in partnership with Santa Clara County.
“We recognize the urgent need for an effective and equitable vaccination effort for our community and are proud to partner with the County of Santa Clara to bring this vaccination site online as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Al Guido, 49ers president. in a statement. “We have put all the resources at our disposal to meet this challenge to ensure that members of the communities we live in can be vaccinated safely and quickly every day.”
The Levi’s Stadium site is operated by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department and is open to all eligible residents of the county. Earlier this week, the county announced that all residents 65 and older were eligible to book their appointments.
“The only way we can get through this pandemic is together, so I welcome this collaborative approach to get our residents vaccinated on a large scale,” Susan Ellenberg, Santa Clara County supervisor, said in a statement. “Our county has a history of leading and opening California’s largest vaccination site in partnership with the 49ers is just another example of this.”
While Levi’s Stadium is not the first sports venue in the state to be used as a vaccination site, it will be the largest once fully operational. In Southern California, Petco Park and Dodger Stadium have also been used to distribute vaccines. When the Dodger Stadium site launched last month, Los Angeles officials hoped to reach a capacity of 12,000 shots a day.
In Oakland, Governor Gavin Newsom announced this week that the first large-scale federal vaccination site will be launched at the athletics’ home, the Oakland Coliseum.
The 49ers had previously offered Levi’s Stadium for county use, but district officials, while receptive to the offer, said the biggest obstacle to getting weapons is not a matter of distribution, but a lack of supply. While the site will open with a capacity of 5,000 shots per day, there are plans to ramp up to 15,000 per day “as vaccine stock increases,” the press release said.
Now the organization’s offer is coming true, with the largest vaccination site in California launching at its home early next week.