PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A group of elected officials Wednesday plan to push for using Lincoln Financial Field to administer COVID-19 vaccines, but they’re unlikely to sway the Kenney administration. The mayor and health commissioner have a different plan for getting the vaccine out.
Some cities have been using stadiums for mass vaccine clinics, and the NFL said last weekend that — because the season is now over — all of them could be opened up for that purpose. Councilmember Allan Domb, for one, says the Linc would be an ideal place. He and several other local officials say they will press for it.
The Kenney administration doesn't reject the use of the Linc. Health Commissioner Tom Farley said the stadium might be an option in the future, but right now, the constraint on vaccine distribution is not a lack of sites to distribute it. It’s the limited supply of vaccine.
Philadelphia’s been getting about 20,000 doses a week and has 1.3 million people to vaccinate. Farley said the Linc’s location makes it less useful than, say, the Convention Center, where the Health Department is currently running a mass clinic.
"Having something that’s more centrally located in Philadelphia and accessible to people that don’t have cars is more important to us right now," he said.
"If we ran a vaccine clinic down there, we would be vaccinating more people from New Jersey or Delaware than we would from the city of Philadelphia, and we only are given doses appropriate to the population of the city of Philadelphia."
Former congressman Bob Brady, a proponent of the stadium site, says vaccinators could ask for identification proving residence, but Farley said that’s the kind of step that slows down the process. He says the stadium may be useful in the future — when there’s more vaccine — but for now, there are better alternatives.
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Farley said the department plans to run mass clinics in Harrowgate, North Philadelphia and University City beginning Feb. 22. They also expect hospitals — now that they’ve vaccinated their own workers — will be running mass clinics for their patients, starting with a joint Mercy and Penn Medicine one this weekend.
You have to register and then will be contacted to make an appointment and, because vaccine is so limited, those are only for people over 75 or with underlying health conditions.