SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - A vaccine event held Saturday in Barrio Logan brought vaccines to 2,000 people from some of the hardest-hit areas in San Diego County.
The event was hosted at Family Health Centers of San Diego in partnership with San Diego City Councilwoman Vivian Moreno, the Latino Equity Council and AMR, who helped supply the volunteers administering vaccinations.
The 92113 zip code encompasses Barrio Logan and surrounding neighborhoods and has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the county. However, it remains one of the zip codes with the fewest vaccinations.
In addition, the Latino and Hispanic population make up 55.1% of positive cases in the county, but only 21% of vaccines administered so far.
To help close that gap, organizers held the vaccine event Saturday. In the week prior, about 70 volunteers went door-to-door to 4,000 homes and asked if people need help making vaccination appointments, hoping to help increase engagement.
“People were so appreciative. People who maybe thought they didn’t qualify for the vaccine, people who had tried and said ‘I don’t even know how to figure out the system, it’s too complicated,’” said David Alvarez from the Latino Equity Council.
Alvarez said if people needed help, they started making appointments on the spot, giving them a phone number to call and make an appointment immediately.
He added that many people in minority communities don’t have access to computers, and if they do, it’s hard for them to navigate the websites that sometimes require quick action and refreshing in order to secure an appointment.
“We can’t just post this on social media and people are going to go to the computer and figure this out. We were going to their door, we were getting their phone number, they were getting calls in their native language, we were scheduling their calls,” said Alvarez, saying that a technology gap is creating the vaccine gap.
He said because of their door-to-door outreach, they were able to get 2,000 people vaccinated in one day at this event, which is on par with the number of people vaccinated at county super stations on a daily basis. Their hope is to create more events like this to continue to close the vaccine gap.
“It’s now become something where we all have to do this together in order to get past this and events like this help make that happen,” said Alvarez.