Military personnel to assist at Detroit vaccination site | Sports

The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the deployment and the personnel were expected to arrive Friday at the mass vaccination site.

Ford Field was announced earlier this month as a community vaccination center. The indoor stadium is home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions. Concourses will be set up with vaccination stations, registration and waiting areas.

Vaccinations are expected to start Wednesday and will run for eight weeks. Lieutenant General Laura J. Richardson, commander of U.S. Army North, said 6,000 vaccines can be administered each day at the site.

The vaccines given will be above the state’s regular allocations, officials said Thursday.

“State government can’t tackle this pandemic and the vaccination drive alone,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday during a news conference at Ford Field.

“If we want to get back to normal, we all need to get vaccinated and encourage our loved ones and friends and co-workers, neighbors to do so, as well,” Whitmer said.

Kevin Sligh, FEMA’s acting administrator in the Great Lakes region, said the stadium “is uniquely suited to support the disadvantaged and medically underserved populations in Detroit.”

Sligh said his grandmother, mother, twin sister, an uncle and several cousins contracted the virus.

“We were lucky, every last one of them made it through,” he said. “But it made me think, as an African American myself with three co-morbidities, to really think hard about getting the vaccine.”

The coronavirus has taken a disproportionate toll in severe sickness and death on Black people in the U.S. and an Associated Press analysis in January showed Black Americans in many places lagged behind whites in receiving shots.

“We all need to get beyond the pandemic and hopefully everyone will get the vaccine, especially our disadvantaged populations and our medical underserved communities,” he said.

Detroit is about 80% Black. The city has administered about 150,000 vaccine doses. Mayor Mike Duggan said earlier this week that the city’s adult vaccination rate is about 15%.

Michigan announced last week that all residents age 16 and up will become eligible for the vaccine on April 5, nearly a month before the May 1 date pledged by President Joe Biden.

People age 16 to 49 with certain medical conditions or disabilities will qualify starting Monday, when 50- to 64-year-olds can begin getting shots.

On Wednesday, Michigan reported more than 3,160 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, but no new deaths. The state has had close to 615,800 cases and more than 15,800 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.