LOS ANGELES — Briceida Aguilar has been taking many precautions during the pandemic while she holds down two jobs, one in a clothing store and the other in a restaurant.

“We use a lot of protection, wash our hands, disinfect everything,” Aguilar said. “We make sure we don’t touch, you know, skin. We make sure to keep our distance.”

She has stayed safe during the pandemic and is relieved to know that down the street from her home, in South Los Angeles, there is a clinic run by St. John’s Well Child and Family Centers. At the clinic, she can get free COVID-19 testing or the vaccine when it becomes available, but she has some concerns about it.

“That it was made a little too quickly,” she said. “Like people in the community are just a little iffy about it right now.”

Since Aguilar has to work, she is not taking any chances and plans to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available. She lives in a community hit hard by the pandemic according to Jim Mangia, C.E.O. of St. John’s Well Child and Family Centers, a network of 18 health clinics that serve mostly low-income Black and Latino families throughout South Los Angeles.

Mangia said recent numbers show 25% to 30% of their patients are testing positive for coronavirus.

“They are in the factories. [They] are the grocery workers so they are the frontline and essential workers so they are getting infected,” he said. “They are bringing it home to their families and infecting their families. Most of the employers, particularly in South L.A., are not providing masks and protective gear for their employees so people are getting infected at work.”

Mangia wants to ensure South L.A. is not left behind when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available. His organization spent over $150,000 to buy three ultra-cold freezers for storing the Pfizer vaccine, which must be kept cold at -94 degrees Fahrenheit, and another five freezers for the Moderna vaccine. They even had to dip into their own resources because he said there has been lack of a coordinated response from the federal government.

“Even though we are a federally qualified health center and we receive federal funding, we have to use our own funds for the purchase of these freezers,” he said. 

Mangia said South L.A. historically faces health disparities and access to care so he has developed a plan to vaccinate at least 200,000 people starting this month. “We’ll start receiving and administering on the 21st to the people that work at St. John’s and the surrounding healthcare providers in the neighborhood,” he said. “And then sometime in January is when the vaccine will start becoming available to the mass population.”

Aguilar said she plans to get a vaccine when the time comes because it is not only herself she has to worry about.

“I have a lot of younger siblings between the ages of 14 and down so I always think about what if I do get COVID but then I have to work,” she said.

She knows she can rely on the clinic down the street to give her a fair shot at protecting herself from the coronavirus.