Through the morning and into the afternoon, hundreds of people lined up early at the site, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Office of Emergency Services. Bumper-to-bumper lines of vehicles stretched for blocks to and from the university campus for a one-dose chance to be immunized.
The governor's Office of Emergency Services said Wednesday that many appointments for the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine were going unfilled at the federally run site, and as a result, the site planned to offer shots for anyone 18 or older on a walk-up basis between Thursday and Sunday.
It was essentially a blanket invitation to come get a shot, provided recipients could attest to eligibility. In response to that invitation, people began lining up at the site hours before it opened at 9 a.m. Things appeared to be going smoothly initially, but by 10 a.m., people were being turned away.
And even those who came from clear across L.A., with appointments, were in for a mammoth wait — including Ramon Lopez, of Woodlands Hills, who said he had been in line for about an hour and a half, followed by another 30-minute wait just ahead of the injection.
The site accommodates drive-ups and walk-ups, but operators shut down the walk-up portion on Thursday due to the surging demand.
Officials encouraged people waiting in line without appointments, or those who want to be vaccinated at this site in the coming days, to make an appointment through visiting the state's MyTurn.ca.gov website or by calling prior to coming to Cal State LA. Officials stressed that the only way to guarantee an appointment at the site was to register ahead of time through the state's MyTurn system.
"The enthusiasm and interest from the public has been overwhelming and positive today and demand has far outnumbered the limited supply of 7,000 vaccines per day that we are able to administer, " according to a statement from CalOES.
It was unclear why there was a glut of appointment slots, especially as local public health officials expect the most intense demand yet as eligibility widens.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's partnership with the governor's office to operate the site ends on Sunday, and the city of Los Angeles will take over management of the site on Monday.
As of Wednesday, the East L.A. site — and its associated mobile vaccination clinics — had administered more than 313,000 doses. By the time officials put out the invitation, they said there was enough vaccine to reach a goal of 350,000 doses by the time the federal/state partnership ends on Sunday at the site, and on Saturday among the mobile clinics.
In contrast to sites run by local counties and their affiliated vaccine networks, the Cal State site — and its sister site in Oakland — got their vaccine batches directly from the federal government. County PODS and networks get their allocations from the state, which gets them from the federal government. Vaccines following that supply line have been sporadic and difficult to plan for.
The Cal State location was opened in February as an eight-week pilot project. It marked a cooperative effort between the state and federal government targeting lower-income areas hard hit by the pandemic. A team of more than 200 soldiers, deployed from Fort Carson in Colorado, were deployed to Southern California to help establish and staff the complex.
More than 68 percent of doses have been administered to people in underserved and at-risk communities. Between the two sites, more than 650,000 doses were distributed in California.
The site had been set to close on April 11, but L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said his city will take over on April 12.
The issue of open vaccine slots early in the week was happening not only at the federal/state site.
COVID-19 vaccination appointments at county-operated venues also appeared widely available on Wednesday, but the county's public health director, Barbara, Ferrer, said it was likely the result of scheduling issues, not a sign of dwindling demand.
Ferrer also said that even if there is a sudden wide availability of appointments, it doesn't mean the county should immediately expand eligibility to everyone aged 16 and over, which is scheduled to occur April 15.
"There's 5.5 million people in (currently) eligible groups, and all of them have not received their first dose," Ferrer said. "... We only opened for people 50 and older a few days ago, so we're going to continue to make sure there's good access."
Appointments were also readily available at many Los Angeles city-operated sites, and county Supervisor Janice Hahn took to Twitter to say there were slots waiting at a vaccination center in San Pedro.
The county Department of Public Health even announced online the availability of vaccination appointments for Thursday at its county-operated vaccine sites, particularly the large-scale site at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
But Ferrer noted that appointment slots often open in waves, since sites can't list available appointments until they are assured of their supply of doses.
"One of the dilemmas here is that we're still struggling to be able to actually release appointments ahead of time, and many of us really are still only able to release appointments a couple days in advance of when ... people can go and get vaccinated," she said. "We're really trying to work hard to get a smoother forecast moving forward."
Often when people go online and find a wealth of available slots, "it's because somebody just opened up a host of appointments," Ferrer said.
She said health officials monitor activity at the various vaccination sites, and if appointments aren't filled, capacity is increased at other sites with higher demand. She said the county is "looking into what might explain why at some sites we have more availability this week," but she said vaccine doses are not going unused. She noted that the county generally administers about 95% of the doses it receives within seven days.
"The goal here is always, and we've been great about this ... (to) get vaccine into people's arms within a seven-day period, and we are never carrying over a vaccine one week to the next," she said. "And we've always met that goal."
She said she did not foresee a reversal of that trend this week, despite a sudden surge in appointment availability.
"Until we start seeing a problem this week with actually filling appointments for the rest of the week, I would say we're on a pretty good path to making sure those doses are actually administered," she said.
Photographer Brittany Murray and City News Service contributed to this report.
___
(c)2021 the Daily News (Los Angeles)
Visit the Daily News (Los Angeles) at www.dailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
