A new kind of big top is coming to the United Center next week, and excellent seating – appointments – are still available.
It may not be the biggest show on earth, but officials say the new mass vaccination site, which launches outside the Near West Stadium next week, offers Illinois seniors the best chance of being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
And while it was a circus for many Illinois residents who jumped through hoops to lock up their vaccination slots elsewhere, thousands of appointments were still available at United Center for people 65 and older as of Saturday afternoon.
These appointments are reserved for seniors until Sunday 16:00, when people aged 16 and older with chronic health conditions are eligible to receive surplus.
“The city works 24 hours a day to ensure that all of our residents are vaccinated, especially the elderly who are among the most vulnerable to the disease,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said in a statement. “The vaccination of older residents – regardless of the underlying conditions – has the greatest impact on preventing COVID-19 deaths, as more than 80% of Chicago’s deaths were seniors.”
Only about a quarter of the 110,000 available appointments were booked as of Friday morning. Officials did not offer an updated score on Saturday, but there are still many slots available for the third and fourth week of March.
City officials said they had “significantly expanded” their capacity at the multilingual call center at (312) 746-4835. To reduce the waiting time, they recommend booking online at zocdoc.com/vaccine.
The first vaccinations from the United Center will be administered Tuesday at the federal site, which will dispense approximately 6,000 doses per day, providing the latest shot in the arm for a rollout of vaccines gaining momentum in Illinois.
The state, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, set a record for a second consecutive day with 134,239 shots given Friday.
Nearly 3.3 million doses have been administered since December, and about 1.1 million people have been fully vaccinated, with either the required doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or with the new one-of-a-kind Johnson & Johnson formula.
This means that about 8.5% of Illinois residents are immunized. This is less than the 80% of officials aimed at achieving herd immunity.
While that goal is in sight, Illinois’ moving average number of shots per day is a new high of 90,428.
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At the same time, infection rates in the country have dropped to near-lows, although newer, more contagious strains of the virus have been identified in the state – and the elderly are still taking a cruel toll.
Officials reported that 2,655 new cases were diagnosed under 79,248 tests, slightly raising Illinois’ average positivity rate to 2.4%.
The state also recorded another 50 COVID-19 deaths, including that of a Cook County man in his 30s.
This is higher than the state’s daily average of about 37 deaths per day over the past week, but overall the death rate is lower from about 56 per day in early February.
Illinois’ death toll has climbed to 20,750 in the past year, among 1.2 million residents who tested positive.