Santa Clara County Opens Thousands Of COVID Vaccine Appointments

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — Santa Clara County released 10,000 COVID-19 vaccine appointments over the weekend and plans to open up thousands of more slots this week across multiple sites.

As of Monday morning, appointments were available this week at mass vaccination sites like Levi’s Stadium and Gilroy High School along with other smaller clinics.

The increase in availability is due to more vaccine supply, which county officials said in a briefing last week is finally increasing

"Santa Clara County, in my view, hasn't really gotten the fair share that it really should have given our population," said Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, the county’s testing and vaccine officer. "So I think this is the appropriate amount of vaccine that we should be getting.”

Some 300,000 vaccines arrived in the county last week, according to District 3 Supervisor Otto Lee. In previous weeks, the county has only gotten around 50,000 to 70,000 doses per week.

"We've been waiting for this day for a long, long time," Lee said. "This is really a game changer."

More than 57 percent of eligible residents in the county have received at least one dose and nearly a third of residents are fully vaccinated.

Patch editor Kat Schuster contributed to this report.

To register for a COVID-19 vaccination, visit sccfreevax.org.

For more news and information about the vaccine rollout in California, visit Patch's information hub. Also, be sure to check out How To Get The Coronavirus Vaccine In California.