Military personnel to assist at Detroit vaccination site

More than 220 Defense Department military and support personnel are expected at Ford Field in Detroit to support COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the deployment and the personnel were expected to arrive Friday at the mass vaccination site.

Ford Field was announced earlier this month as a community vaccination center. The indoor stadium is home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions. Concourses will be set up with vaccination stations, registration and waiting areas.

Vaccinations are expected to start Wednesday and will run for eight weeks. Lieutenant General Laura J. Richardson, commander of U.S. Army North, said 6,000 vaccines can be administered each day at the site. The vaccines given will be above the state’s regular allocations, officials said Thursday.

“State government can’t tackle this pandemic and the vaccination drive alone,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday during a news conference at Ford Field.

“If we want to get back to normal, we all need to get vaccinated and encourage our loved ones and friends and co-workers, neighbors to do so, as well,” Whitmer said.

Kevin Sligh, FEMA’s acting administrator in the Great Lakes region, said the stadium “is uniquely suited to support the disadvantaged and medically underserved populations in Detroit.”

Sligh said his grandmother, mother, twin sister, an uncle and several cousins contracted the virus.

“We were lucky, every last one of them made it through,” he said. “But it made me think, as an African American myself with three co-morbidities, to really think hard about getting the vaccine.”