City eyes change in mass vax site lineup
May find replacement location for Fenway
Mobile coronavirus vaccination sites and clinics geared toward essential workers are in and the mass vax site at Fenway might be out as Boston rolls out more information about its vaccination plans and an upcoming public-awareness campaign.
“Fenway has been a great site for many people, but we all know that baseball is coming back,” city Health Chief Marty Martinez told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the April start of the Red Sox season. “We do think there may be another site that transitions from Fenway, but that’s still being figured out.”
Noting that the Reggie Lewis Center is rapidly scaling up as a mass vaccination site, he said, “We’re glad that we have Fenway and Reggie Lewis. We do believe that there is potentially some consideration to open another site.”
Also during the briefing, Martinez said the city had brought on consultants to create “public awareness and visibility ads” around the vaccine, similar to what the state embarked on a month ago.
“These are efforts to focus on high visibility and awareness over the next few weeks before we do more boots-on-the-ground strategy,” Martinez said. “This is to build upon the outreach we’ve done, the groups that we’ve reached out to and the presentations we’ve done on the vaccine, so we can build upon the state effort around vaccination awareness, but also a city effort that’s population specific.”
This particularly will be geared toward Hispanic residents, who have been vaccinated at far lower rates than Asian, Black and white Bostonians.
Data released this week showed that 8,086 per 100,000 Hispanic Bostonians have received their first shot, compared with 15,115 Asian Americans, 14,089 Black people and 16,215 white people. Racial disparities in the at-times bumpy vaccine rollout have made consistent headlines, and the state, city and local organizations have worked hard to ease access and persuade minorities, who more often distrust the government and medical institutions, to sign up for the shot.
In all, 16.3% of Bostonians aged 15 and up have received the vaccine, including 7.5% who have gotten both of the shots needed for the Moderna and Pfizer inoculations to fully work.
Martinez noted the mobile vaccine site that the city’s shooting for having up by the end of the week, saying the city plans on having at least two such sites running through the end of the summer. This first one, in partnership with Boston EMS, will bring vaccines to seniors and people with disabilities in public housing.
Martinez said the city is looking to have clinics for essential workers in Mattapan and Dorchester up next week, in advance of those workers soon becoming eligible under state guidelines.