Gov. Gavin Newsom toured the vaccination super station at Petco Park on Monday and praised San Diego for “leading the way” in administering coronavirus vaccines in California.
Newsom noted that San Diego opened the first high-volume vaccination site, setting an example for Los Angeles and other counties in the state.
“You’ve inspired others throughout the state of California,” he said during a press briefing on the baseball field, adding that San Diego County is “leading this state, per capita, in the administration and distribution of this vaccine.”
He said San Diego’s success was setting up a “competition of sorts” that would spur efforts in other jurisdictions that “candidly are way behind.”
Newsom said the biggest challenge remained obtaining a sufficient supply of vaccines to keep vaccination centers like the one at Petco Park operating at full capacity.
He said California was allocated 1.06 million doses last week, will get slightly more this week, and as many as 1.2 million next week.
But he acknowledged that “we’re going to need to see more doses coming into California to keep these mass sites open.”
So far California has administered 4.63 million doses, Newsom said, with a daily record of 197,000 doses set on Sunday.
He said that despite the shortage of vaccines, there was good news in the decline in daily case rates across California.
“50,000 cases down to 10,000 cases over the last 30 days,” he said. “Everything that should be down is down. That is encouraging news indeed.”
Newsom also touched on prioritizing the safe reopening of schools, saying vaccinating teachers would be central to the reopening efforts.
“It is my desire to get our schools safely open as quickly as we can,” he said.
The governor was joined at Petco by Mayor Todd Gloria, Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten, Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, and San Diego Padres CEO Erik Greupner.
Updated at 2:35 p.m., Monday, Feb. 8, 2021
