SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — People began receiving vaccines Tuesday at San Diego State University's Viejas Arena and at the Mexican Consulate in Little Italy as both sites began operating limited hours for COVID-19 vaccine administration.
A walk-up clinic will be administering vaccines from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at Viejas Arena at San Diego State University, located at 5500 Canyon Crest Drive. Initially, the clinic will be able to administer 750 doses daily but can ramp up to 1,500 per day when more doses are available in the region.
COVID-19 vaccines will also be available from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the patio in the Mexican Consulate, 1540 India St. in Little Italy. The walk-up clinic will have the capacity to administer up to 100 appointments a day, dependent on supply.
The Viejas Arena clinic will set aside 10% of doses for residents who live in communities adjacent to SDSU, as will the existing Copley-Price YMCA clinic. The Mexican Consulate site serves members of the Latino community, which has been more severely impacted by COVID-19, as well as the general community.
The county Health and Human Services Agency announced 243 new COVID-19 infections and four deaths Tuesday, raising the cumulative totals to 268,160 cases and 3,498.
State numbers released Tuesday kept San Diego County firmly in the red tier of the state's four-tiered reopening blueprint, with an adjusted daily case rate of 5.5 new infections per 100,000 people. The testing positivity is 2.4% and the county's health equity metric -- which looks at the testing positivity for areas with the lowest healthy conditions -- is 3.4%, both in the orange tier.
Health officials on Monday also reported more than 823,000 -- or 30.6% of San Diego County residents over the age of 16 -- have received at least one dose of the two-shot vaccines, and more than 504,000 people -- or 18.8% -- have been fully vaccinated.
More than 1.59 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to the region, and more than 1.44 million have been logged as administered. That number includes both county residents and those who work in San Diego County.
Of 11,456 tests reported Tuesday, 2% returned positive. The 14-day rolling average of positive tests is 2.7%.
The number of hospitalizations increased to 233 from Monday's 226. Of those, 81 were in intensive care units, a drop of three from Monday's 84.
Scripps Health, which runs the Del Mar super station vaccine site, announced Friday it will be closed on March 27 and 28, due to the low number of COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered.
Patients who have appointments scheduled for those days will be rescheduled automatically through the MyTurn online appointment system.
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