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The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center mass vaccination site will begin administering injections on Wednesday, adding another opportunity for area residents to receive coronavirus vaccines as officials prepare for increased supplies.
About 700 people will receive the injections at the facility Wednesday, according to officials at LCMC Health, which will operate the federally funded facility with the New Orleans Department of Health and the state.
Hundreds of additional doses will be offered at the site Thursday and Friday, when the LCMC, like other healthcare providers across Louisiana, is expected to receive the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine.
“We’ll start tomorrow and move into Thursday and the weekend,” Dr. Jeffrey Elder of University Medical Center, LCMC Health’s director of emergency preparedness operations, told a New Orleans city council committee Tuesday. “We hope to be able to vaccinate next week as well.”
The vaccines will be offered to eligible residents who have requested them from the LCMC or the city’s health department. Appointments are needed to avoid creating the long, first-come, first-served lines that have affected similar mass collection sites elsewhere in the country.
On Wednesday, vaccinations will be given to people already selected on the waiting lists. Those wishing to register for later dates can make appointments from 7 a.m. on Wednesdays.
The opening comes a week after LCMC officials first announced they would use the Convention Center building to vaccinate large numbers of residents. The plan, they said, was to start with hundreds of daily doses and then grow to thousands as more supplies arrived.
Since the vaccine rollout began in the United States in December, most people eligible to receive the vaccines in Louisiana have taken them through a constellation of pharmacies, clinics and hospitals.
But in recent weeks, hospital operators and local officials have accelerated plans for larger facilities that will eventually serve thousands of people a day.
Ochsner Health said it will host a drive-thru vaccination event at the Shrine on Airline on Thursday, where it plans to give 2,000 injections of the Pfizer vaccine. Half of the doses will go to patients who received their first dose at a drive-thru a month ago, while the remainder will go to eligible residents who can get an appointment through Ochsner.
Jefferson Parish said he will also host a drive-thru event Thursday at the Alario Center, also by appointment.
More than 657,000 Louisiana residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while nearly 370,000 have received both doses, according to data from the Louisiana Department of Health.
As of December, the LCMC has distributed more than 60,000 vaccines under the Pfizer or Moderna brand names, Elder said, injections that require cold storage or shipping and that must be taken in two doses several weeks apart.
But he is set, like other hospitals in the state, to receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week. This vaccine requires normal refrigeration temperatures and can be taken as a single dose.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been shown to be 72% effective in preventing moderate to severe coronavirus cases in clinical trials in the United States, but 100% effective in preventing death. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, on the other hand, are over 94% effective in preventing symptoms of COVID-19.
Residents will be offered the vaccine the LCMC has available, health officials said. Elder on Tuesday hailed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine as an effective way to prevent people from dying from the virus and ultimately achieving herd immunity.
“It keeps them from entering hospitals and it keeps them from dying,” he said. “We cannot underestimate how important it is to get people to come to clinics to get them vaccinated.”
For its launch at the Convention Center this week, LCMC is using a waiting list of eligible recipients established by the city’s health department and its own hospitals. Only people 65 years of age or older, people with certain health conditions, kindergarten to grade 12 or daycare teachers, pregnant women, and certain other groups are eligible for vaccines.
The hospital operator is also working with the Regional Transit Authority to identify sites where people can be picked up and bused directly to the convention center to receive their vaccines.
There will likely be two pickup sites, one in East New Orleans and one in Algiers, said Dr Ayame Dinkler, chief administrative director of LCMC Health.
Residents who can come to the center to get vaccinated can park their cars in parking lot F, opposite Hall J, she said.
With a mass vaccination site going live, a city hall spokesman said on Tuesday the city was closing its own COVID-19 testing sites and focusing on administering vaccines.
Testing sites run by the Louisiana National Guard and CORE will continue to serve residents, spokesman Beau Tidwell said.
The city is also looking for volunteers who can help it maintain its vaccination list throughout the city, help the city’s 311 call center, and work at city-run vaccination sites. So far, around 2,000 people have signed up, but the city hopes to at least double that number.
Workers who sign up to help are considered emergency response personnel according to state guidelines, although there is no guarantee that enough vaccines will be available for everyone who signs up. said Laura Mellem, public engagement manager for New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
Meeting details and contact details:
To make an appointment with LCMC Health, eligible residents can call 504-290-5200 or go online at lcmchealth.org/vaccine.
To make an appointment with Jefferson Parish, eligible residents can call 504-518-4020 or go online at covidvaccinations.jeffparish.net.
To make an appointment with Ochsner Health, eligible residents can call (844) 888-2772 or use the MyOchsner patient portal online.
A full schedule of all New Orleans public testing sites is available at https://ready.nola.gov/incident/coronavirus/calenda
Editors Jeff Adelson and Faimon A. Roberts III contributed to this story.
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