Los Angeles (AFP)

The city of Los Angeles has announced that it will convert this week's parking lot at the famous Dodgers baseball team, which so far housed the largest coronavirus testing center in any state. United, in a vaccine site against Covid-19.

Health authorities hope to be able to vaccinate up to 12,000 people per day when the center, which is to open "by the end of the week", is operational.

More than a million coronavirus tests have been performed for free in the Dodgers stadium parking lot since the site opened to the public last May.

The conversion of the site, as well as another large testing center located in the west of the city, should allow health authorities "to immediately assign personnel, equipment and other resources to the distribution of the vaccine" Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti explained in a statement Sunday evening.

"Vaccines are the surest way to beat this virus and to pave the way for recovery," he said.

The capacity of Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country with some 10 million inhabitants, "will be temporarily reduced (...) but the change will more than triple the number of vaccines offered to Angels," the statement said.

Los Angeles will continue to offer free screening tests to all residents, whether they have symptoms or not, at eight permanent sites and six mobile centers.

This conversion comes as California, like many other American states, is struggling to increase the rate of vaccinations.

Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday announced a goal of administering one million more vaccines over the next nine days.

California has received more than two million doses of the vaccine but less than a third had been administered Friday to caregivers and medical staff who are priority for this first wave of injections.

The vaccination campaign was met with the reluctance of some of the caregivers concerned.

According to local health authorities, between 20% and 40% of people who were offered the vaccine before the end of the year have declined.

Southern California and particularly Los Angeles County have become one of the main hotbeds of the pandemic in the United States in recent weeks, despite restrictive measures limiting activities and travel.

Nearly 14,500 new cases were identified in the county on Sunday, for a total of 920,000 since the start of the epidemic, or nearly one in ten inhabitants.

© 2021 AFP