United Center opens as mass vaccine site
A federally run mass vaccination site at the United Center opened — an hour behind schedule — Tuesday morning amid widespread confusion over ever-shifting guidelines for who is eligible to receive coronavirus inoculations at the facility, announced with much fanfare 10 days earlier as a new option for residents across Illinois who qualify due to age, occupation or medical condition.
The delay in opening led to more than a hundred people standing wrapped around two blocks, with some chatting about who they know who has been vaccinated and others frantically flagging down a volunteer to ask whether they were going to miss their appointments. A security guard strode beside the crowd, urging people to stand 6 feet apart.
Even as immunizations got underway, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other officials did little during a news conference at the site to bring clarity to a situation muddled by the last-minute decision over the weekend to close appointments to residents outside Chicago and Cook County after an initial sign-up period for anyone age 65 or older.
Hours later, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said that instead of reopening the United Center site to residents outside Chicago and Cook County, the state would redirect the remaining portion of its doses allocated to the site — 10% of the roughly 336,000 doses expected to be administered — to federal mobile vaccination teams, targeting hard-hit communities in the rest of the suburbs and other parts of the state.
The change in eligibility for the United Center was made over concerns from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that not enough Chicago residents were getting appointments, undermining a common goal of equitable vaccine distribution to communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
Chicago and Cook County residents who weren’t among the more than 53,000 people who’d booked an appointment as of late Tuesday morning will have to wait a little longer for additional information on how to sign up, though Chicago public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady later said city residents should keep checking Zocdoc.com for appointments that become available due to cancellations.
The city and county, meanwhile, will be doing targeted outreach to encourage people in some of the communities with the highest coronavirus infection and death rates to sign up for the vaccine. In Chicago, those efforts will be focused on five ZIP codes on the South and West sides: 60608, 60619, 60620, 60649 and 60652.
An announcement about how suburban Cook County residents will be able to sign up for future appointments at the United Center is expected later this week, Cook County Health spokeswoman Caryn Stancik said in a statement.
The city’s share of the doses — 60% of the total allocated to the United Center — will be made available to people 65 and older, front-line workers in essential industries and those who qualify under state rules based on preexisting health conditions, with the exception of smokers. The city, which gets its own vaccine supply from the federal government, has not opened up its other vaccination sites to people under 65 with underlying health conditions — a point of contention with the state.
Despite the confusion, several people who had landed an appointment and were in line Tuesday morning said that although the logistics at the United Center weren’t perfect, the arrival of their appointment day was a cause for celebration as the anniversary of Pritzker’s stay-at-home order last March nears. They said their shots would symbolize the start of a true spring and summer this year, speaking with wideeyed optimism about plans to reunite with family and leave the house.
First in line was Omelan Kluchnyk, having arrived at 6:30 a.m. after a short commute from Ukrainian Village. His 8 a.m. appointment would not start until about 9 a.m., however, because of unspecified delays. But he shrugged when asked about the hiccup.
“I feel great as long as we get our shots,” Kluchnyk said, smiling despite the grumpier demeanors of other people in line. The 70-year-old said he has missed Sunday Mass most and looks forward to attending in person after a year of watching virtual services at home.
Claude Hadley, 73, was so tired he leaned against a shuttle bus with his cane as his appointment time passed. He had gotten to the site at 7:45 a.m. after traveling from the Austin neighborhood, but he said he hadn’t gotten an explanation of why he was still waiting after his 8:30 a.m. slot.
“I have no idea what they’re doing,” Hadley said. “I want to get it and get it over with, but I wish it was more fast than what we’re doing now.”
Still, Hadley said the frustration couldn’t stamp out his excitement as he looked forward to the rest of his family getting vaccinated and finally going on a trip to the Atlanta suburbs after their trip was canceled last year due to the pandemic.
“I want to be out in the backyard, cook, just lay out there, do nothing,” Hadley said. “That’s it.”
Officials struck a celebratory tone at their news conference, belying the behind-the-scenes wrangling over the rules governing who will be able to get vaccinated at the site.
“Starting today, the United Center vaccine site is officially open and will begin to vaccinate tens of thousands of Illinois seniors who secured appointments since registration opened last Thursday morning as well as those who meet new eligibility requirements,” Lightfoot said.
The opening of the mass vaccination site comes exactly one year after Pritzker issued a statewide disaster proclamation for the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, 11 cases of the new coronavirus had been identified in Illinois.
With 1,510 new confirmed and probable cases and 16 additional fatalities reported Tuesday, the state has seen 1,201,027 known cases and 20,781 deaths from COVID-19.
But as of Monday, half of Illinois residents 65 and older had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine and nearly 1.2 million people, more than 9% of the state’s population, had been fully vaccinated, public health officials said.
“We’re getting closer every single day to the end of this pandemic, but we’re not there yet,” Pritzker said.
Some of the people waiting in line Tuesday said the pandemic has been a lonely time during which they seldom saw their family and, during holiday reunions, could only elbow-bump grandchildren. Alexandra Glenke, a 69-yearold woman from Garfield Ridge, said grocery shopping is normally the only time she gets out of the house, but she was optimistic this spring will have better days ahead.
“(I’m) quite hopeful it’s going to be a little bit more not as isolated from people,” Glenke said. “I’m very happy. I think everybody’s happy.”
As the minutes passed and parts of the crowd grew antsy, strangers connected over the confusion. One woman passed Kluchnyk, the man at the front of the line, and exclaimed, “We’re going to be here a long time.” A man informed the people waiting at North Wood Street and West Warren Boulevard of how there were still others behind them. “You haven’t been around the corner yet.”
But by 9 a.m., a man via a loudspeaker announced the United Center was up and running, and the metal gates opened up to the first patients.
“The United Center is operational as of 09:00 hours,” the man said. “We are now a live clinic. Thank you.”
The United Center site will be the biggest COVID-19 vaccination center in the state, with a goal of 6,000 vaccines per day. The site will be open seven days a week for eight weeks.
State officials later Tuesday announced a new staterun mass vaccination site in Bloomington, which is set to open Thursday and will be capable of administering 4,600 doses per day, making it the state’s second-largest site. It is restricted to those who live and work in McLean County.
The 6,000 doses per day that the United Center site is capable of providing are in addition to the doses that the city and state already are receiving from the federal government. The doses provided at the center will be the Pfizer vaccine, and people also will receive an appointment for their second dose at the center after receiving their first.
The city may take over operation of the mass vaccination site after the initial eight-week period is up, especially if vaccine shipments increase as expected in the coming weeks, Arwady said.
Lightfoot again defended restricting vaccine access to Chicagoans over the weekend, saying fewer than 40% of sign-ups were city residents, which goes against equity goals.
Appointments also will be set aside for people who live in vulnerable areas, while appointment blocks will be given to organizations for targeted outreach, including for people with disabilities.
“What we do now determines how equitable and inclusive our post-COVID recovery will be,” Lightfoot said.
State Sen. Patricia Van Pelt, whose district is home to the United Center, praised other officials for changing the registration procedures when they determined not enough Chicago residents were signing up for appointments.
“So often, I’ve seen them say, ‘Next time. We’ll get it right next. This time, all the vaccinations went out to the people who we didn’t expect it to go to, but next time we’re going to get it right.’ But you all said, ‘This time,’” Van Pelt said.