Where to find the coolest spots to get your shots
We tracked down interesting venues where people can get jabbed, from the Indy 500 to under a whale.
You can get it at the Indy 500 speedway, under a giant blue whale, while shooting skeet or at a baseball park or soccer stadium. As vaccinations lag, health officials are looking at unexpected vaccination venues to entice people to roll up their sleeves and join the immunized.
With 46% of Americans now vaccinated, the number of people lining up is beginning to slow. Getting more signed on will require mobile units, pop-ups and walk-ins, state governors told President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
“It’s going out, it’s trying to be innovative, trying to figure out how do we take it directly to people,’’ said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
One way that innovation is showing up is fun and inventive places to get vaccinated, venues that are definitely not your local medical center.
“Vaccinating 100 people right now here at the health department is more difficult than it was to vaccinate 5,000 a month ago,” said Graham Briggs, director of Olmsted County’s health department in Rochester, Minnesota. “The biggest thing I’m concerned about right now is that the arms are drying up.”
Here are a few of the nation’s more interesting current venues, and one international location that was too good to pass up:
At the Indy 500
During the Indianapolis 500, fans with tickets can get vaccinated inside the gates. Local residents can get their shots on 16th Street outside the gates. The vaccination clinics are being held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, also known as the Racing Capital of the World. The vaccinations throughout May are being coordinated by the Indiana Department of Health and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In a New York train station
Also in New York, eight train stations will host COVID-19 vaccination clinics in New York City and its suburbs in hopes of convincing riders and employees to get their shot. They include Penn Station and Grand Central Station in Manhattan. Those who get vaccinated will also get either a free one-week subway card or two oneway local train tickets.
At an aircraft museum
Atlanta’s Delta Flight Museum is closed to the general public but you can get in if you get vaccinated there. Housed in two 1940s-era aircraft hangars at Delta’s headquarters, it’s a designated historic aerospace site and features historic planes dating to the 1930s.
While skeet shooting in Illinois
Get a shot, take a shot. In Illinois, people can get their COVID-19 shots at the 1,600-acre World Shooting and Recreational Complex, then spend the day shooting 100 free targets of trap, skeet, or sporting clays.
Veggie shopping at the farmers’ market
Fresh strawberries. New potatoes. The COVID-19 vaccine. Iowa’s Des Moines Downtown Farmers’ Market reopened May 1 after a long pandemic shutdown. It will offer the bounty of local farms, fresh-baked goods, live music and a vaccination station run by Hy-Vee Healthy, a Midwestern supermarket chain.
At the track
The storied Aqueduct racetrack in New York is also home to a walk-in vaccination clinic. The site has been open since January and has so far provided more than 180,000 doses of vaccine and operates seven days a week.
Dracula’s castle
In Transylvania, you can get a shot in the arm rather than a stake through the heart. Romanian health officers have set up a COVID-19 vaccination center at the 14th-century Bran Castle, the inspiration behind Dracula’s home in Bram Stoker’s 19th-century gothic novel “Dracula.” The site’s vaccination certificates feature a fanged medical worker brandishing a syringe.