Awaiting funding, nonprofit covers costs of 24th St. vaccine site

The Latino Task Force, a Mission District-based nonprofit that took the reins of pandemic-response in the neighborhood, has been fundraising for the last few weeks to keep a local vaccination site open that provides vaccines and test kits to the Mission’s residents.

The nonprofit was expecting San Francisco to step in with public funds — after all, the city had for the last four years partially covered the cost of running the site, which offers flu and COVID-19 vaccines and test kits.

The city delayed the funding for the program after a kerfuffle in the city’s contracting process: The Latino Task Force’s contracting partner and a mobile healthcare company, BayPLS, was initially awarded a city contract for the site, after receiving a passing score on its proposal. 

But on Oct. 23 the city said it made a scoring error, and that BayPLS — and the Latino Task Force — would have to wait for funding while the city again considered other bids for the contract.

Now with three weeks left until the Latino Task Force shuts down its operations at the site, the city has yet to announce a new contractor.

In the meantime, the Latino Task Force’s leaders said the organizations running the site — the task force, BayPLS, and UCSF — have been raising their own money to cover the operational costs to pay staff and other essentials such as gloves. 

The department delivered 300 COVID-19 and 450 flu vaccines to the Latino Task Force this fall, but leaders of the nonprofit said those were not enough as the site vaccinates between 150 to 200 people a week.

The groups were earlier also purchasing vaccines, but since the Latino Task Force held a press conference at the site on Nov. 15 blasting the Department of Public Health, the health department has said it will provide more vaccines in top of the initial delivery.  

“We should not have to beg to be invested in,” said Susana Rojas, who is on the executive committee of the Latino Task Force. “We are a community that gives so much to the city. We are asking today [for the city] to invest in our health, to make sure that we continue to have community sites where people can be protected.”

The Latino Task Force, UCSF and BayPLS, run the site at 24th and Capp streets providing vaccines for Mission District residents, or anyone who shows up, regardless of a patients’ insurance status. The site has been operating since the heyday of the pandemic.

And it was all set to continue receiving city funding earlier this year. On Aug. 19, the city’s public health department issued a request for proposals to administer the vaccination site.  

Six weeks later on Oct. 3, the city agency informed BayPLS that it had won the $600,000 bid, a victory that both the company and Latino Task Force celebrated. 

“Everyone was super excited. We even put out fliers and sent texts to all our constituents that we were ready to start and that they could come to the site,” said Tracy Gallardo, another executive committee member at the Latino Task Force.