It's finally sinking in.

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<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mass-vaccination-sites-for-covid-19-ar
e-back/ar-AASyYAU?ocid=msedgntp>

<https://tinyurl.com/2p8jxstm>

Mass Vaccination Sites for Covid-19 Are Back.
Jennifer Levitz - 14h ago.

Public officials across the country are reopening temporary
mass-vaccination sites that they wound down months ago, in an effort to
get more people vaccinated and boosted in the latest Covid-19 surge
driven by the Omicron variant.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island are among
states that have opened or are planning soon to open sites designed to
administer hundreds or even thousands of shots a day. The locations
include Boston’s Fenway Park, malls, a casino and convention centers.

Many states phased out mass vaccination sites last summer and shifted to
smaller, more-targeted inoculation efforts after demand waned among
adults eligible to receive their first shots.

“Going into the summer, we started to have a little bit of hope,” said
Rachel Seeber, a member of the Warren County Board of Supervisors in
upstate New York, who pressed to have a clinic reopened in a former
Sears store there.

Officials say they are expanding capacity again largely to provide
booster shots and reach children who recently became eligible for
vaccines.

Of Americans 5 years or older who are eligible to be vaccinated, 66.3%
are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. About 38% of fully vaccinated adults have received booster
shots.

Some of the vaccination locations are also offering Covid-19 testing.

Officials running the mass vaccination sites say they also hope to reach
some of the 27% of adults who aren’t fully vaccinated against Covid-19,
according to CDC data. Interest among unvaccinated adults hasn’t risen
during the Omicron surge, though, a recent survey by the Kaiser Family
Foundation found.

Officials say traffic has been fairly brisk at the resurrected large
clinics, though not as high as it was in the spring when millions of
adults were getting their first shots.

The state-led “Burlington County Covid-19 Vaccine Mega-Site” reopened on
Nov. 30 in a large A.C. Moore store in New Jersey after closing down in
a nearby mall in July, and is averaging 1,000 people a day, according to
the health system managing it. That is up from about 200 people a day in
early December; between 50 and 100 adults are getting a Covid-19 vaccine
for the first time.

“In speaking with people, it’s clear the Omicron variant has folks
concerned,” said Phyllis Worrell, emergency preparedness coordinator for
Virtua Health, which is running the site alongside the state and county.

Oregon is ramping up its high-volume vaccine clinics and expects to have
10 running in coming days, the largest of which could administer up to
2,000 or 3,000 shots a day, said Dean Sidelinger, the health officer and
epidemiologist for the state of Oregon. The state is aiming to give 1
million new booster shots to its population of 4.2 million by the end of
the month.

“It’s kind of all hands on deck so that we can make sure that if someone
is ready to get their vaccine—first dose, second dose, extra dose or
booster dose—that we can have a site fairly convenient for them where
they can get it, so that that’s not the barrier for them,” Dr.
Sidelinger said.

Pharmacies and healthcare clinics are still providing many vaccines but
have also become strained as eligibility for shots has widened fairly
rapidly, Dr. Sidelinger said. In upstate New York, where a new mass
clinic recently reopened, county officials said they were hearing from
small doctors’ offices that were overwhelmed with vaccine appointments.

The U.S. has recently averaged about 1.1 million new doses a day,
federal data show, which includes people receiving boosters.

There are challenges with restarting large-scale community vaccination
efforts, including a Covid-19-related healthcare staffing crunch that is
tying up medical workers who participated in the big vaccine rollout
last time, Dr. Sidelinger said.

To ease similar staffing pressures in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker
recently said he is sending personnel to help local health departments
run mass vaccination operations. In Rhode Island, the National Guard is
staffing a large site that just opened at a convention center.

The seven-day average for new cases in the U.S. topped 600,000 for the
first time on Thursday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. has more than doubled the peak number of cases seen in last
winter’s surge, even as testing issues make it difficult to track the
numbers.

Hospitalizations for confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases reached a
seven-day average of 121,600 Friday, according to data posted by the
U.S. Health and Human Services Department. The number has been rising
fast, but hasn’t reached the pandemic peak of 137,510 on Jan. 10, 2021.