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Some of the 11 regional collaborations are already operating, including sites in the Berkshires, Worcester, Plymouth County and Cape Cod. Others are expected to debut soon; in the Pioneer Valley, Northampton and Amherst have announced plans to launch a collaboration starting next week.
The governments and hospitals of Randolph, Southbridge, Gardner, Rutland, Lawrence and Franklin County will also run state-approved regional sites on Wednesday.
Regional sites became more central in the vaccination strategy last week, when state officials wrote to local health boards advising them that most would no longer receive doses to run small clinics in town for their own residents.
Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said local governments could receive doses if they partner with other organizations to establish larger sites that meet several requirements: they must be able to vaccinate at least 750 people per day, report data quickly, and provide a way to book an appointment through the state’s Vaxfinder website.
The state also requires that these sites be open to all residents of Massachusetts, rather than limiting their use to people from specific communities.
Massachusetts will need an increase in vaccine doses for regional sites to reach 750 injections per day. On Cape Cod, officials recently said they were receiving even less than 1,000 doses per week for clinics that include the Melody Tent in Hyannis. Meanwhile, the state continues to point to a limited dose supply from the federal government as the biggest barrier to distribution.
The abandonment of smaller community clinics infuriated many municipalities that had tried to help kickstart the state’s vaccination campaign. They now fear that a greater concentration on large-scale sites will make it more difficult to help vulnerable populations, especially the very old. State officials retorted that they plan to continue distributing vaccines to 20 vulnerable communities of color, as well as community health centers, and will rely on towns and cities to vaccinate those who do not. cannot leave their home or are difficult to reach.
They stress that most local efforts, however, should focus on regional collaborations, in order to get many people immunized quickly.
The change has also caused confusion in some communities who were already working together as regional groups, but now say they will not be able to continue vaccinating residents.
In the northern Merrimack Valley, Amesbury was leading a group of nine neighboring communities who came together in the initial campaign to vaccinate first responders and local health workers. Officials said they plan to run smaller regional clinics, mostly staffed by volunteers, once a week or twice a week, and they are unlikely to be able to adapt to state requirements.
“Basically what they said to the regional clinics is that if you can become a mega-site for mass immunization, we’ll reopen you,” said John Guilfoil, a spokesperson representing the nine communities.
Guilfoil said the state initially supported letting the nine towns run small immunization centers, “and then, in the middle, said, ‘Actually, no, we want you to be big immunization centers. ‘”
The Baker administration’s shift over the past month to focusing on large vaccination sites has caused whiplash in many parts of the state. But in the Berkshires, the regional model has always been part of the plan, said Laura Kittross, director of the Berkshire County Boards of Health Association.
The regional model made sense there because distributing the work to the many small towns with fewer than 2,500 residents would have required a lot more work to probably inject a lot fewer people, Kittross said. Each site in Berkshire will eventually be able to vaccinate 1,000 people per day, and the region already leads Massachusetts as a percentage of its population to have received a vaccine.
Berkshire officials are also making plans to reach those who can’t get to the collaborative sites. But a rural area like the Berkshires may have an inherent advantage in getting people to travel far from home, as residents are so accustomed to driving long distances as part of daily life, Kittross added.
“I think we’re a little different here,” she said in a recent interview. “I’m not sure it would work elsewhere.”
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.
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