The Palm Springs Convention Center will open as a COVID-19 vaccine site on Friday, according to Dr. Geoffrey Leung, Riverside University Health System-Medical Center chief of family medicine. The move will take some pressure off Riverside County's vaccination site in Indio.

Clinics at the Palm Springs site will be operated by Curative Inc., and appointments will be scheduled through Curative's website. 

Information about when appointments could be booked was not immediately available.

The convention center was previously used as a COVID-19 testing site, also operated by Curative. 

California released figures Monday suggesting the lopsided distribution of vaccines to date. Latinos have received 15% of nearly 5 million doses administered — half the rate of white residents, though they make up the bulk of infections and deaths. Black residents have received 2.7% of the doses despite making up 6% of the state's population. 

Los Angeles County, the nation's most populous with 10 million residents, has delivered at least one dose to just 7% of Black residents 65 and older, while inoculating more than twice that rate of white and Asian seniors. While lower than the rate for white seniors, 14% of older Latinos have been vaccinated.

“Everyone is pretending like this is going to get done in a month or two months," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founding director of University of California, Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation. “Now is the time to design these systems so those who are most severely impacted by COVID, in terms of cases and deaths, are those who have a fair shot at getting a shot."

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