"WITH 70 PERCENT of Massachusetts adults having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday announced plans to wind down operations at mass vaccination sites while making the shots more easily available in local communities. The shift comes as demand for the shots has been leveling out, indicating that most people eager to get a shot have already done so.
“Now that we believe we are going to hit the 4.1 million goal we started with over the next few weeks, it’s time to adapt our vaccination efforts to make sure we get to some of the harder to reach populations,” Baker said at a State House press conference.
According to the CDC, 3.9 million people in Massachusetts have received at least one shot as of Monday, or 70 percent of eligible adults. Another 180,000 people have scheduled appointments to get a first dose in the next week. When the COVID-19 vaccines first rolled out in December, Baker set a goal of vaccinating 4.1 million state residents, and he said those people are on track to be fully vaccinated by the beginning of June.
As a result, the governor announced that four of the state’s seven mass vaccination sites will close by the end of June. These include Gillette Stadium, Hynes Convention Center, DoubleTree hotel in Danvers, and the Natick Mall. Baker said those sites were chosen because of the availability of alternative vaccination sites in the area and projections about interest in appointments there. The Hynes site is also part of a federal partnership with FEMA, which was always scheduled to end after eight weeks. The seven mass sites have administered 1.2 million vaccine doses so far."
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Boston Globe coverage: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/03/metro/baker-says-state-plans-close-four-seven-mass-vaccination-sites-june-outperforming-rest-country/
Press conference video link = https://youtu.be/KgFn9aFCGJA
Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
"Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers."
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