Los Angeles County Vaccine Mega Points of Dispensing (MPOD) Program

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

When the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines became available, Los Angeles County established Mega Points of Dispensing (MPODs) as one of the critical strategies to help vaccinate more than 10 million County residents. These were established at regional sites (the Pomona Fairplex, Six Flags Magic Mountain, The Forum in Inglewood, the County Office of Education in Downey, and California State University in Northridge) in large parking lots in hard hit areas in order to efficiently and accessibly accommodate large volumes of drive-thru vaccinations. While the County had conducted planning, exercises, and operations for MPODs in the past, many of the unique characteristics of the COVID-19 Vaccine rollout were unprecedent in their complexity and magnitude for a jurisdiction the size of Los Angeles County. Not only did the County meet the challenge, with the MPODs safely, effectively, and efficiently administering hundreds of thousands of vaccines for county residents, but as one of the first jurisdictions to establish large scale MPOD operations, the County shared its best practices and lessons learned with other jurisdictions across the state and country as others stood up their own efforts, contributing to this critical phase of the nation’s response to the virus.