PASO ROBLES — The San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department opened its doors to a vaccination site in Paso Robles on Jan. 18.
This site, called the North County Point of Distribution (POD), is located at the Paso Robles Event Center.
On Friday alone, the vaccination site administered 149 vaccines, according to health officials.
So far, the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department has administered 15,511 vaccination doses out of the 15,541 first vaccine doses sent to the public health department, according to the health department's website on COVID-19 vaccines.
KSBY got a look at the COVID-19 vaccine administering process from its storage to its administration.
San Luis Obispo County health officials say the administration process takes about 10 minutes. Patients are held for another 15 minutes after receiving the vaccine as health care workers monitor their reaction.
"We hope that we are getting the vaccine so we can ramp up," says Josh Taylor, CAL Fire SLO Assistant Chief. "We should have been doing 15,000 a week and we're not there yet. We want to be there and we're capable of it, but we just don't have the vaccines."
This limited supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses is forcing the county to reassess its distribution process. San Luis Obispo County is currently vaccinating health care workers and residents 75 years of age and older.
More appointments just recently became available. The County is also prioritizing people's second doses over first-time appointments.
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UPDATE (Saturday, Feb. 6, 12:35 a.m.) – This story has been corrected to show that the Paso Robles COVID-19 vaccination site – not the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department – administered 149 vaccine doses on Friday alone. We have also added the total number of vaccination doses administered thus far by the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department. We apologize for the confusion and regret the error.