BOSTON (AP) - The state-run coronavirus vaccination site at Fenway Park will close as the Boston Red Sox prepare for opening day of the new baseball season.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said Thursday that the mass vaccination operation will move to the nearby Hynes Convention Center later this month.
The Republican said the transition will be gradual, with the Hynes operation going online March 18 and the Fenway site closing on March 27. The Red Sox open their season at Fenway April 1.
“To have ballplayers in the park at the same time you have people in the park who are there for a different purpose, we just felt was, a little more complicated than we felt was appropriate for this,” Baker said, according to WCVB-TV. “The Hynes is a more permanent solution.”
The governor announced last month that fans will be allowed to attend professional sports. Starting March 22, ballparks and arenas will be able to operate at up to 12% capacity.
More than 25,000 vaccine doses have been administered at Fenway to date, and the site is expected to deliver more than 55,000 doses before closing, according to Baker.
Fenway, one of seven mass vaccination sites in the state, has the capacity to administer 1,500 shots a day, Baker’s office said. The Hynes will be able to dispense more than 5,000 a day by the late spring.
A look at other coronavirus developments in Massachusetts:
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VACCINE APPOINTMENTS
A limited number of new coronavirus vaccination appointments made available to Massachusetts residents Thursday were quickly snapped up, prompting the state to blame federal authorities for the limited supply.
Only about 12,000 vaccine slots opened Thursday morning, down from 50,000 last week.
No new first-dose appointments were available at several mass vaccination sites Thursday, according to a tweet from the state’s official account at about 7 a.m.
New appointments at Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium, and the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston were not available due in part to “a large number of previously scheduled second-dose appointments.”
Eligible residents were instead advised to seek appointments at one of the state’s other mass vaccination sites, but by 11 a.m., the state tweeted all appointments at those sites had been booked.
Baker has repeatedly said it may take weeks for eligible residents to book appointments because demand far exceeds vaccine supply.
Also Thursday, the first doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine were administered in the state. The new, single-dose vaccine received emergency federal authorization just last weekend.
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BUISNESS GRANTS
Nearly $40 million in grants have been awarded to more than 1,000 Massachusetts businesses as part of the state’s COVID relief response, Gov. Charlie Baker announced Thursday.
The funds represent the ninth round of business grants being administered by the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation.
The effort, which Baker says is the largest of its kind in the country, has awarded more than $600 million to more than 13,000 businesses in the state to date.
The majority of grants in the latest round went to restaurants, bars, caterers and food trucks; personal services businesses; and independent retailers, according to Baker’s office.
Nearly 300 of the recipients were minority-owned enterprises, and more than 400 were women-owned.
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VIRUS CASES
Massachusetts health officials reported 42 additional deaths and more than 1,400 new coronavirus Thursday.
The state has had nearly 16,000 deaths and more than 550,000 cases of the virus since the pandemic started.
Massachusetts’ average positivity rate has decreased, from 2.1% on Feb. 17 to 1.7% on March 3, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The state’s average daily new cases has also dropped, from about 1,855 a day on Feb. 17 to 1,551 a day on March 3.
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