Mass vaccination site opens at San Francisco's Moscone Center

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco city workers call Friday's opening of the mass vaccination site at Moscone Center a turning point in the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Those of us who have been working on this over the last year are very emotional. We have been all week. We are really feeling optimistic about moving forward," said Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of the Department of Emergency Management.

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Those who were vaccinated Friday were grateful.

"I am very happy and pleased to be here today," C. Don Clay said after receiving his shot.

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VACCINE TRACKER: How California is doing, when you can get a coronavirus vaccine

The city partnered with Kaiser Permanente to create a site at Moscone Center that can administer up to 10,000 shots a day. They don't have that many doses though and don't know when they will get them.

"We do believe in the coming week we will have a better sense of the cadence and the allocation moving forward," Carroll explained.

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All appointments Friday and next week are booked. Officials say they can only plan for the doses they have, so they can't open up appointments beyond what they know they have in their inventory. But the logistics are in place.

"I'd rather be ready than not ready and I feel with 100% confidence that we can take as many vaccine as they will throw at us," Carroll said. "What we would like to tell the public is continue to log on, continue to check the site for availability. We will also be communicating with the public to try and give them a sense of what we have on a week to week basis."

She said you can visit this website to find out when you are eligible and to look for appointments. The state has also created another website as a site to check for appointments.

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