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A powerful snowstorm covered much of the northeast on Monday, severely hampering public health efforts to bring vaccinations between Pennsylvania and New England.
Mass vaccinations at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of the professional football Giants and Jets, have been called off, while Managed testing and vaccination sites in New York were also closed for the day.
In Pennsylvania, state-run testing centers Armstrong, Cumberland, Jefferson, Monroe and Wayne The counties were also closed due to snowfall. Vaccinations scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at the Allentown fairgrounds have been postponed to Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
“People stay off the road, it’s dangerous. The first job is to protect people’s lives by dealing with the snow first,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told MSNBC Monday morning, predicting that up to 22 inches of snow could fall over America’s largest metropolitan area.
“We really want to get back to vaccinations tomorrow morning, God willing.”
Meanwhile, in New England, doctors and nurses stationed at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium, where the baseball Red Sox and football Patriots play, continued their vaccination efforts on Monday despite the 10-inch forecast. snowfall for Boston.
“We are in New England, we know the weather sometimes makes it more difficult, but we are finding a way,” said a statement from CIC Health, which operates both the Gillette Stadium and the mass vaccination sites in Fenway Park.
About 500 people in Boston were expected to be injected into the shade of Fenway’s green monster on Monday, hoping to increase it to 1,200 a day after the snow stops and is cleared away. .
“So we think we could do more, clearly, as the weather improves,” Rodrigo Martinez, CIC director of marketing and experience, told NBC News as patients rolled up their sleeves and that medical professionals – sitting in front of Samuel Adams’ taps – were pulling vaccines from vials to syringes.
Jacquie Van Haelst, 85, was due to get the shot at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on Tuesday, about 28 miles south of Boston, but feared the continuing snowstorm could ruin those plans.
So when she heard from her niece that seats had opened at Fenway on Monday, Van Haelst jumped out of the shower and ran towards Lansdowne Street.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am,” she said after taking her Pfizer photo. “I am delighted. And so I’m ready to go home and hit some tennis balls.
But a mass vaccination center at the Reggie Lewis Center, a basketball and athletics venue in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, has been closed and all appointments set for Monday have been postponed to On February 8, city officials said.
Matteo Moschella and Kathryn Prociv contributed.
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