BOSTON (WHDH) - Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday announced that 120,000 new COVID-19 vaccination appointments will go live over the course of the next week as Massachusetts continues to make “significant progress” in slowing the spread of the virus.
More than 644,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered to residents and the effort to get shots in arms is expected to ramp up greatly in the coming days, Baker said during a news conference that followed a tour of the new mass vaccination site at Fenway Park.
The Fenway site opened to eligible groups on Monday and staffers will be giving out 500 doses each day this week. The site will jump to 1,250 daily doses in the coming days with a goal of reaching 8,000 shots per day in the “not too distant future,” Baker said.
The state is looking to open a total of seven mass vaccination sites, including Fenway and large-scale operations that have already launched at the Eastfield Mall in Springfield and at Gillette Stadium.
A mass site at the Double Tree Hilton Hotel in Danvers opened Wednesday and Boston’s Reggie Lewis Center is expected to transition into a mass site by the end of the month.
“We will have more details to share on other sites soon as we continue the rollout,” Baker said.
Baker urged eligible residents who are seeking appointments to visit a mass vaccination site because they are “highly efficient” and have the capacity to do hundreds or thousands of shots per day.
New appointments at mass sites will go live every Thursday, including 55,000 that will be made available for next week.
A total of 15,500 new appointments will be made available at various pharmacy sites including Walgreens and CVS, while retail stores including Stop and Shop, Price Chopper, Wegman’s, and Big Y will be adding 4,000 appointments.
Health care locations and local boards of health will be posting about 60,000 new appointments.
“Overall 120,000 new appointments will be made available over the course of this week,” Baker said. “We will continue to add to that capacity as we go forward.”
Baker noted that it will “take some time” to get through each priority group due to the limited vaccine supply that is shipped out by the federal government, but he stressed that all eligible residents will eventually have an opportunity to get vaccinated.
Baker said he was “not satisfied with where we are,” but defended his choices to prioritize certain groups for vaccination, which he said slowed down the process.
A total of 1,963 coronavirus cases were reported on Tuesday, marking a drop in new cases for the fourth consecutive day.
Hospitalizations are also down 31 percent since they peaked on Jan. 4 and the number of patients in the ICU has declined by 20 percent since a peak on Jan. 12, according to Baker.
“This marks very significant progress since the start of the new year,” Baker said.
Baker also announced that the state is working to launch a call center for residents to reserve a vaccination appointment over the phone.
Additional details on the call center are expected to be revealed later this week.
To find a vaccination site near you, check out the interactive map below:
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1z197EsKQBJ1jkUL9YjnLSRN30qFRnfqd&w=640&h=480]
To find your vaccination phase and priority group, click here.
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