Detroit’s Ford Field is starting to transform from football to vaccines
Numbered, black-curtained cubicles line the concourse surrounding the field where the Detroit Lions play as state and federal leaders shift Ford Field from football stadium to the state’s first federally operated mass COVID-19 vaccine clinic in the heart of Detroit.
Inside those cubicles, hundreds of thousands of Michiganders will get COVID-19 vaccines over the next eight weeks in a massive effort to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible to tame the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the state’s residents must commit to taking COVID-19 vaccines if they want to stop the spread of the disease, which has killed 15,835 Michiganders and
infected more than 615,000, according to state data.
“We are in the fourth quarter of this fight,” Whitmer said at Ford Field on Thursday morning. “It’s no time to spike the football. It’s time for us to grit our teeth, and keep doing the work we need to do until the last second of this event plays out.”
Detroit Lions President and CEO Rod Wood said the domed stadium has hosted concerts, football games, the Super Bowl and the Final Four over the years, but this clinic eclipses them all.
“Today, though, we are announcing the most important event we have ever hosted,” Wood said. “Over the next eight weeks, Ford Field will become not just the home of the Detroit Lions, not just one of America’s great concert venues and entertainment venues, but will be transformed into Michigan’s largest on-site inoculation clinic.”
It will be one of nearly 20 high-volume, federally run sites across the nation and will be equipped to put 5,000 shots in arms per day beginning Wednesday, with an additional 1,000 daily doses to be used for mobile vaccine clinics through county health departments and the city of Detroit.
By Thursday morning, 65,000 people had already registered for vaccines at Ford Field, said Rick Keyes, president and CEO of Meijer, which is handling the registration process for the vaccine clinic.
“Well, you know it’s really exciting. We’ve only been open a couple days, but already this morning at about 11 o’clock, we’re already sending out the invites. And so, it’s going to move very quickly,” Keyes said.
The Ford Field clinic will operate 8 a.m.-8:30 p.m. each day. It will be managed by the state of Michigan with support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Wayne County, the city of Detroit, Ford Field, Meijer, Henry Ford Health System, the Lions and the Protect Michigan Commission.
In the first six weeks, the federal government will supply doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the Ford Field site. That will change to Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in the final two weeks. However, people who got a first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine will be guaranteed a second dose of the same kind in subsequent weeks.
“The facility cost for Ford Field has been waived by the Ford family at a value of $1.4 million,” said Caleb Buhs, director of communications for the state Department of Management, Technology and Budget.
An additional $4.2 million to cover such expenses as janitorial work, maintenance and other services tied to the vaccine clinic that will be completely covered by FEMA, Buhs said.
“We are in the fourth quarter of this fight. It’s no time to spike the football. It’s time for us to grit our teeth, and keep doing the work we need to do until the last second of this event plays out.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, talking about the need to get people vaccinated
How to sign up for a Ford Field vaccine
Immunizations will be given at no cost and insurance will not be required, nor will it be requested at the vaccination site. Any Michigan resident currently eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine under the state health department prioritization guidelines is able to register for an appointment at Ford Field.
Here’s how to sign up:
Online at clinic.meijer.com/register h
/CL2021
Text EndCOVID to 75049 h
Call the Michigan Department of Health h and Human Services COVID-19 hotline at 888535-6136 and press 1. The state health department hotline is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. and 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
People who register will receive an invitation either by phone or text message when it is their turn to schedule an appointment.
Vaccine appointments will be scheduled four to seven days in advance of the week when they can schedule their appointments.
Those who opted to get a phone call rather than a text message to schedule a vaccine appointment should not screen their calls, said Kerry Ebersole Singh, director of the Protect Michigan Commission.
“Those invites are going out,” Ebersole Singh said. “Answer your phone. Some of you selected that you wanted to just schedule by phone. People will be calling you and it may be from an unidentified number. So pick up your phone. Don’t screen. We’re calling to get your vaccination appointment scheduled.”
Who is eligible for shots at Ford Field?
Anyone who is a Michigan resident who is eligible under the state’s COVID-19 vaccine guidelines can get a shot at Ford Field. Starting next week, the state’s COVID-19 vaccine eligibility widens to include:
Anyone age 16 or older with a disability or h an underlying health condition that put them at risk for severe illness from COVID-19
Anyone 50 or older h
Parents, guardians of special needs children h
Food processing and agricultural workers h
K-12 teachers and school staff h
Mortuary service workers h
Child care workers and staff h
Law enforcement officers, including h and corrections officers
Health care workers h
People who live and work in long-term h care facilities
And starting April 5, anyone 16 and older, no matter their health status, can get a COVID-19 vaccine in Michigan.
Parking, transportation for Ford Field
Free transportation to Ford Field will be available for residents of Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties and the city of Detroit if needed. To request transportation, people should complete the accessibility and transportation request form when they schedule their shots.
Free parking also will be available at Ford Field in the Gem Theatre parking garage, 1910 Brush, for people to enter Ford Field through Gate A. Free parking also is available in the Ford Field parking deck, 1902 St. Antoine, for people to enter through Gate G.
When people arrive for their vaccine appointments, they will undergo a temperature screening, and must answer screening questions. No one with a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher will be allowed to enter.
Why Ford Field was picked
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Public health officials and emergency response planners mapped communities nationally that would most need support in the mass vaccination effort using the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index.
The SVI considers such factors as socioeconomic status, household composition, minority status, languages, housing type and transportation.
“At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Detroit was one of America’s epicenters for cases and deaths,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who leads the state’s Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities. “As a Detroiter, I felt this personally, having said goodbye to 27 people due to this virus.
“The virus hit our city hard, but Michiganders are tough. We’re tough. We can come together to prevent COVID-19. We pushed down our curve and we stepped up to help one another.
“Today, right here at Ford Field, southeast Michigan becomes a symbol of hope. The mass vaccination center is a sizable step forward toward Michiganders returning to some sense of normalcy while actively saving lives.”
Ford Field was selected to become a federal
mass vaccine clinic because the region scores high on the Social Vulnerability Index, is well known to people in the region, it is accessible for people with disabilities, can accommodate 10,000 people at one time, has convenient access to parking and public transportation as well as existing security and crowd-control infrastructure, the White House COVID-19 Response Team said last week.
The Department of Defense will bring in more than 220 military medical and support personnel who are expected to arrive in Detroit on Friday and will administer the shots.
Henry Ford Health System will provide clinical quality and pharmacy oversight, with Dr. Steven Rockoff serving as the site’s medical director.
The Detroit-based hospital system led clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy for two of the three COVID-19 vaccines that now have emergency use authorization for use in the U.S. — Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s, said Wright Lassiter III, Henry Ford Health System president and CEO.
“In each of those clinical trials, Henry Ford was successful in enrolling the largest number of people of color of any study site, and now (one of) those same vaccines are being administered here.
“With capacity to administer thousands of vaccines per day, the Ford Field site could make a significant difference in vaccinating our most vulnerable and underserved populations who were hardest hit by COVID-19,” he said.
Mobile clinics also get vaccine boost
In addition to the 5,000 doses of vaccines the federal government will supply to Ford Field per day, local health departments in metro Detroit also will get a boost in their vaccine allocations in the next eight weeks as part of the partnership.
In the first six weeks of the program, 7,020 extra doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed each week to the Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb county health departments and to the city of Detroit’s health department, said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for the state health department.
Macomb County and Detroit each will get an additional 1,170 doses per week. Oakland and Wayne counties will get 2,340 additional doses each week, she said, noting that it’s unclear how many doses each local health department will get in the seventh and eighth weeks of the partnership, when Johnson & Johnson vaccines are distributed.
The local health departments will use those vaccines through mobile clinics and community outreach programs to target the most vulnerable neighborhoods and communities in the region, Sutfin said.
FEMA Region 5 Acting Regional Administrator Kevin Sligh Sr. said it wouldn’t be possible to get the Ford Field vaccine clinic ready for the volume of vaccines that will be administered without the public-private partnership.
“The battle against his virus has made us all weary, but there is hope,” Sligh said. “Hope that we can very soon put this pandemic behind us and move forward.
“The key to that brighter future is the vaccine.”