The city of Long Beach will start offering COVID-19 vaccines to workers in the food sector in the coming days, officials announced Wednesday.
This includes employees at grocery stores and restaurants who live or work in Long Beach. But it excludes drivers for food delivery apps such as GrubHub, Instacart and UberEats, according to the city. Long Beach officials said they’re contacting employers, and that the vaccinations will take place at the Long Beach Convention Center — appointments required.
Like elsewhere in Southern California, Long Beach is seeing quick bookings of vaccination appointments. Slots have already been filled for the week of Jan. 19, the city said, encouraging food workers to check with their employers or sign up for updates on the city website.
Along with Pasadena, Long Beach has a health agency that runs separately from the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which has not extended vaccination availability to food workers.
Health care employees, long-term facility residents, people over the age of 65 and government emergency personnel were already qualified to get vaccinated in Long Beach. In announcing the addition on Wednesday, the head of the city’s health department described food sector workers to be “very much in the frontline.”
“The nature of their jobs puts their health at risk as they can’t work from home and may not always physically be able to distance themselves from others,” health director Kelly Colopy said in a statement.
The city did not immediately disclose how many doses are available but said that 21,644 vaccines have been administered so far.
Here are the residents qualified as of Wednesday, Jan. 20, to get vaccinated in other jurisdictions. Click the following links for updates and see any available appointments:
L.A. County (except Long Beach and Pasadena)
- Health care workers
- Long-term care facility residents
- People 65 or older
- Health care workers
- Long-term care facility residents
- People 75 or older
- Workers at risk of exposure in the following sectors: education, child care services, emergency services, food and agriculture
- Health care workers
- People 75 or older
Orange County (click here for more information about who’s qualified)
- Health care workers
- Long-term care facility residents
- People 65 or older
- Emergency service workers
- Health care workers
- People 65 or older
- Health care workers
- Long-term facility residents
- Emergency service workers
- Mortuary workers
- Food and agriculture workers
- Emergency service workers
- People 65 or older