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.
The excitement, however, lasted only 20 days. The public health department informed the company on Oct. 23 that the department had detected an error in calculating the scores of the two companies that bid on the project.
Initially, San Francisco-based BayPLS scored 94.60 while another bidder, New York-based DocGo, scored 89.20. However, after correcting for the calculation error, the new score put BayPLS at 59.33.
Five days later, on Oct. 28, the public health department reopened the bidding process and set a 15-day deadline. But the Latino Task Force had already opened the site in mid-October ahead of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos.
“It just leaves us in this position where we already said we were going to do something. We had people in line on the first day ready to go,” said Gallardo. “Everyone makes mistakes. We’re all human. I get it, but there should have been more urgency to figure out a different way to get this out.”
In a statement to Mission Local, the Department of Public Health acknowledged its calculating errors.
“We reissued the [request for proposal] in the interest of fairness to all potential vendors and to comply with city policies,” read the statement. “We deeply regret the delay in contracting and are working hard to provide vaccines in the interim.”
Gallardo said the city should honor the connection and familiarity the community has with both BayPLS and the Latino Task Force as many of their patients are people of color and unhoused.
For a couple of weeks the city’s Department of Public Health had not confirmed to Mission Local when a new vendor will be announced. However, on Nov. 26 the department issued a Notice of Intent to Award to BayPLS, DocGo, and Visit.
Contract negotiations are expected to start as early as next week with the intent to start offering vendor-based service by January.
Despite the selection results, both Gallardo and Rojas said they will remain committed to delivering for the communities they serve.
“San Francisco is one of the richest cities and it shouldn’t be this hard when the money is sitting there to get a service out to the community,” said Gallardo. “We have to do better.”
This story was updated on Wednesday Nov. 27 at 9:45 p.m.
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