Dear Friend --

Yesterday, the city provided over 5,000 free combination flu and COVID-19 tests. We do thousands of these tests a day at multiple sites across the city. It’s a massive operation and those that have been working these sites for most of the year are our dedicated city employees. These employees come from various departments and are now trained to do testing.

They are lifeguards, and clerks, and employees from all across the organization who never imagined they would be staffing these sites daily. We also have a small but mighty medical volunteer corps.

This testing operation also impacts our city services. We are not fully staffed due to staff working in other areas and have hundreds of folks who have had to quarantine, take sick leave, or needed to focus on other parts of our COVID-19 response. It’s a difficult time but I expect in the new year we will not only rebuild our economy but also have the city operating at full capacity again.

I want to thank each and every municipal employee for their hard work, and for their commitment to our testing and now vaccine operation.

I hope the whole Long Beach community will join me in honoring their labor and work.

Thank you and stay safe,

Mayor Robert Garcia