A mass vaccination site capable of inoculating 6,000 people per day against the coronavirus is set to open next month in a parking lot at the United Center, part of a local, state and federal effort to protect more older Illinoisans and people in the communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, officials announced Friday.
The site is scheduled to open March 10, with vaccinations available to any Illinois resident who currently qualifies under state guidelines, including those 65 and older, health care workers and other front-line workers in essential industries, and as of Thursday, people with certain preexisting health conditions. Appointments will be made available first to those 65 and older.
Many of the details, including how people can sign up for appointments, have yet to be announced, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other officials praised the effort as an important step toward ending the pandemic.
The announcement comes as COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations across Illinois continue to decline and as more than 100,000 vaccine doses were administered statewide for the second straight day.
“I hope you’re feeling what I’m feeling, and it’s hope,” Pritzker said at a news conference at the Thompson Center in the Loop. “Things are getting better.”
Illinois and Chicago have been working to boost vaccination rates among Black and Latino residents in particular as members of those communities continue to receive doses in smaller numbers than their share of the overall population.
Those efforts, and vaccinations more broadly, were hampered by low supply from the federal government. But supplies are increasing and could see another boost in the near future if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes a single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson for emergency use, which could happen soon.
It’s yet to be determined which vaccine will be distributed at the United Center, Pritzker said, though it could be the Johnson & Johnson version, which unlike the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna does not require a second shot at a later date.
Whichever vaccine is used, the doses will be supplied by the federal government outside of the allocations already going to the state and the city of Chicago, which gets its own supply.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will play the leading role in operating the site, with shots administered in tents in Parking Lot E at the northeast corner of the stadium. The site is scheduled to be open for eight weeks under the federal program.
FEMA has opened three other mass vaccination sites capable of administering 6,000 doses per day, including at Oakland Coliseum, California State University at Los Angeles and NRG Stadium in Houston. A fourth is set to open Wednesday at Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who joined Pritzker at Friday’s announcement, said half the city’s doses are now being given to Black and Latino Chicagoans, an improvement over the early days when vaccines were largely going to white people. In a subtle nod to an ongoing dispute between the city and Cook County and state over expanding vaccine eligibility, Lightfoot said it’s important to prioritize seniors to prevent deaths.
“We need to make this a game-changing moment for our seniors,” Lightfoot said.
Pritzker said he’s had conversations with Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle about expanding eligibility to people under 65 with conditions such as cancer, diabetes or lung problems, something they’ve resisted due to concerns about the limited supply of vaccine doses.
“The common view is that we want to get as many people vaccinated as possible as soon as possible,” Pritzker said. “We all have a shared view that we’re not getting enough vaccines today to make that happen.”
It’s up to local health departments to determine how best to allocate the doses they receive, though most are following the state guidance on opening up to younger people with health conditions that put them at greater risk from COVID-19, the governor said.
One of the advantages of the United Center site is that it is well-known and easily accessible to people throughout the region but also located near West Side communities that have been hard hit by the pandemic, officials said.
To help bring people to the site, Uber is donating 20,000 free rides to the United Center as part of the program, Lightfoot said. Chicagoans who register for the vaccine and indicate they have no or limited transportation options can sign up for their shot and a free ride at the same time, officials said, but details on how weren’t immediately available.
Closed to fans since early in the pandemic, the United Center has previously operated as a storage facility for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, hosted drives for personal protective equipment and opened its door for donation events. The arena also was a polling site on Election Day.
After a sluggish start, vaccinations have been picking up in Illinois as more doses have arrived and the Illinois National Guard has helped open immunization sites around the state, including several in Cook County.
The state administered 102,670 coronavirus vaccine doses Thursday, public health officials announced, reporting the second-highest daily count following Wednesday’s record of 130,021. The statewide total reached 2,543,620.
The number of Illinois residents who have been fully vaccinated — receiving both of the required two shots — reached 725,464, or 5.69% of the total population.
Over the past seven days, the state averaged 68,988 vaccines administered daily, a record. The previous record was an average of 66,320, recorded the week ending Feb. 14.
As of Friday, 68.7% of doses statewide have gone to white residents, while 8.3% have gone to Latino residents and nearly 7.9% have gone to Black residents. The percentage of doses going to each group is up slightly from a week ago but still fall short of matching their respective shares of the population. Latinos make up 17.5% of the state’s population, while 14.6% of Illinoisans are Black.
A Tribune analysis last month showed that Black and Hispanic Illinoisans were being vaccinated at half the rate of whites.
Officials on Friday reported 2,441 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 55 additional fatalities. The total number of known infections in Illinois is 1,183,667 and the statewide death toll is 20,460.
Over the past week, the state has averaged 1,824 new known cases per day, up slightly from the previous week’s average of 1,782 but still well below the average of 4,557 new daily cases.
The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests was 2.5% as of Thursday. Before this week, the case positivity rate hadn’t been that low since the week ending July 6. It peaked at 12.8% in mid-November.
As of Thursday night, 1,393 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 336 patients in intensive care units and 174 patients on ventilators. Hospitalizations reached the lowest level since July 31, when 1,347 individuals were recorded.
With all those numbers trending in the right direction, Pritzker and other officials sounded optimistic about the coming months, tempered with some caution about the need to get more people vaccinated to prevent the spread of new strains of the virus that are believed to be more contagious.
“Someday not too long from now, we’ll be at the United Center not for a lifesaving shot but for a game-winning shot,” Pritzker said.
But he was noncommittal about when fans might be let back into the arena and other sports venues.
The Illinois Department of Public Health and other medical experts are in discussions about how and when to reopen stadiums to spectators, Pritzker said.
“We just want to be wary and careful about what we do, but certainly those discussions are continuing,” he said.
Lightfoot also said the city’s COVID-19 numbers have been trending in the right direction and she wants the city to be prepared to open up for a more traditional summer if the good numbers continue
“Whether or not we have a summer that looks more like 2019 as opposed to 2020 is going to be wholly dependent upon where we are in the arc of the virus but obviously we want to make sure that if we keep trending in the direction that we’re trending, we’re prepared to open up the city,” Lightfoot said.
