LOS ANGELES — Every morning for months now, Dr. Jerry Abraham, the vaccine director at Kedren Health in South Los Angeles, has been in a race against the clock — taking a shot that he and his team will find people willing to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

"We still have plenty of people that need these vaccines and haven’t been reached,” he said. “I never thought of myself as a public health crusader or missionary but maybe this is what it takes? I’m spreading the gospel.”

Abraham’s mission has taken on a renewed sense of urgency as LA County is again seeing an uptick in new infections due to the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. However, getting people to roll up their sleeves for the vaccine has been a challenge.

“For a while, there we were all just super excited by the fact that there were vaccines available,” he said. “Now we’re in that lull where all the eager beavers, everyone who wanted one, came and got one.”

It is a new reality that has forced Abraham to get creative. On a recent morning, he set up shop at West LA College food drive in Culver City hoping to convince people to get their shot along with their bag of groceries. Nevertheless, even that was a hard sell.

One by one, he was rejected. One person told him she didn't want the vaccine because she believed it was part of a government “conspiracy.”

A team of more than 30 volunteers canvassing the area in an effort to get people vaccinated also came up short with only two people willing to be vaccinated. As the day went by, it became clear Abraham would not be running out of vaccines anytime soon.

“I never thought this day would come,” he said. “I can’t find anyone who wants the vaccine.”

But just as he was about to give up, Abraham's luck turned around when a cannabis grow facility in Cudahy gave him permission to vaccinate its workers. Abraham sprang into action, vaccinating as many people as possible without disrupting the company’s workflow.

"If we didn’t get it right, I could see them like, 'Get out. I don’t care if my employees got vaccinated or not, just leave.' So you’re on egg shells," he said. 

Abraham's first patient was Danny, who asked Spectrum News not to use his last name. Even though Danny was hesitant about the vaccine, he decided to give it a shot.

“Honestly, it was a very impulse thing for me, so we’ll see what happens at the end,” he said.

For Abraham, that alone was worth the hassle.

“Had we not done this, he would not be vaccinated, and that makes me sleep well tonight," he said.

By the end of the day, Abraham headed home after vaccinating 50 people and will be back on the road the next day to spread his "gospel" one shot at a time.