The National Football League told President Joe Biden that it is making its 30 stadiums massive coronavirus vaccination sites for the general public.
Seven NFL groups are already organizing vaccines for Covid-19 in or near their stadiums.
“The NFL and our 32 member clubs are committed to making our component to making vaccines as widely as possible in our communities,” league commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in a letter to Biden on Thursday.
“We can expand our stadium efforts more effectively, as many of our clubs have already presented their services as COVID centers, as well as election sites in recent months,” Goodell wrote.
His letter said the NFL team would coordinate with local, state, and federal fitness officials about vaccination efforts in stadiums, two of which are shared across two teams.
That’s already happening in San Francisco, where the 49ers and Santa Clara County announced Friday that Levi’s Stadium would begin to be used next week as a vaccination site for local residents.
The team said the stadium would be California’s largest vaccination site, with an initial capacity of another 5,000 people who will receive vaccines a day, and plans to increase it to another 15,000 people a day as vaccine stocks accumulate.
Goodell noted that the NFL will have 7,500 vaccinated people from across the country as visitors to Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Commissioner said they had been invited “as a thank you for their heroic service and to underline the importance of vaccines as our country recovers from the pandemic. “
The NFL sent questions to the White House when contacted through CNBC, but Biden’s management did not make immediate comments.
Existing league vaccination sites are hosted through the Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots.
Many professional baseball stadiums in the United States already offer Covid vaccines to the public.
On Friday, a massive transitional vaccination opened at Yankee Stadium in new York City’s Bronx community.
Another site at the Mets’ home in Citi Field, Queens, was scheduled to start providing vaccines last January, but this opening was postponed because the city lacked vaccines.
Los Angeles turned Dodger Stadium into a mass vaccination in January after serving as Covid’s massive control for 8 months.
– Noah Higgins-Dunn of CNBC contributed to this report.
Correction: The NFL has 30 stadiums. A previous one misrepresents the number.
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