Starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, State Farm Stadium in Glendale will begin operating as a 24-hour-a-day coronavirus vaccination site.
A $1 million grant from the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation is paying for the site’s operation, and it is being staffed mostly by volunteers from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. The goal is to administer 6,000 shots per day.
The state’s top health official, Dr. Cara Christ, at a launch event Monday said she hopes the mass-vaccination drive-through can eventually be replicated at other locations across Arizona.
“This sets the stage for later this year when the challenge will be to get millions vaccinated to build herd immunity needed to defeat COVID-19," Christ said.
Vaccinations at the stadium are by appointment only for those in the state’s 1A and 1B vaccine priority groups. Those groups include health care workers, staff and residents of long term care facilities, K-12 school staff, law enforcement and adults 75 and older. Appointments can be made on the Arizona Department of Health Services website, or by calling 2-1-1.
As of Monday afternoon, Arizona's Department of Health Services reported more than 40,000 Arizonans had registered to receive coronavirus vaccines through the new state-run vaccination program and said appointments were still available.
