Fenway Park begins mass vaccinations as winter weather approaches

BOSTON — Fenway Park squeezed in their opening day for mass vaccinations, but now they are working on getting day two to happen as snow moves in. The weather was dismal, but some people found a reason to be excited about getting their first dose of vaccine. It was the first day of mass vaccinations at Fenway Park as a major winter storm tried to throw a change up.

Cindy Cooper of Boston showed up with her friend, who spent hours trying to nail down their appointment before the forecast for snow developed.

“We were texting all night, what should we do and we had a little conflict of coming early, don’t come early. We just came early,” Cooper said.

The health group running the site added extra employees, found more space inside Fenway to keep people out of the weather and opened early to beat the storm. For the most part, Fenway Park isn’t used during the winter, but because of the site being open, CIC Health’s Rodrigo Martinez says they are working with the city to make sure the areas around Fenway are completely cleared.

“Our plan is to try to be open and try to get as many people safely here, get vaccinated,” Martinez said.

Officials explained they time out the opening of the Pfizer vials of vaccine by calculating how many people are in the upcoming hour to avoid wasting any of the six doses in each of these vials. They also helped people bypass red tape if they felt safer rebooking later this week.

“We give them opportunity to come on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday and we book appointments for them then and we already have those slots taken into account so we’re not expecting to wait any longer,” said Martinez.

The vaccine at Fenway is appointment only, so you can’t just show up to see if they have extra doses. Health officials say right now they plan to have their regular hours on Tuesday and are encouraging people to keep their appointments if they can get there safely.

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