According to their acting administrator, Bob Fenton Jr., FEMA was deployed by President Joe Biden to provide assistance in vaccination distribution efforts to states, territories, local governments, and tribes, with an emphasis on aiding underserved communities.
“We’re focused on equity, which means providing the vaccine to the most vulnerable and most affected,” Fenton says. “It’s gonna take a whole community effort. That’s all levels of government — private sector, faith-based organizations and community organizations.”
Ald. Burnett called on Chicagoans to ignore conspiracy theories about microchips in the vaccine.
“If you have a cell phone, they got a chip with you anyway, get rid of your phone! You got OnStar in the car? Get rid of your car cause they got a chip in it,” he says. “Eventually jobs are gonna tell you you can’t work here without it. Some churches are going to tell you that you can’t come into this church without the vaccine. We all need to get this vaccine.”
According to Arwady, officials did not make all vaccination appointments available at the United Center on purpose. However, once they look over the sign-up data and make adjustments, more appointments will become available and people will be able to get the vaccine. She expects that the city will move to vaccinating those within the 1C phase— which is still in draft form— at the end of March.
Here are more details on United Center vaccinations, from Pritzker’s Office.
For city of Chicago residents: Appointments on Zocdoc will now be restricted to Chicago residents. Appointments will also be set aside for Chicago residents who live in high CCVI (COVID Community Vulnerability Index) ZIP codes and/or ZIP codes with low vaccination rates, allowing anyone from these ZIP codes to register.
More information will be provided on eligible ZIP codes and the subsequent registration process later this week. Appointment blocks will be provided to community-based organizations for targeted outreach to special populations in Chicago, including people with disabilities.
For suburban Cook County: To ensure equitable access by suburban Cook County residents, Cook County has been allocated appointment slots at the United Center. The county will announce the process of scheduling those appointments in the coming days through the news media and at vaccine.cookcountyil.gov. For vaccine access in suburban Cook County, individuals without access to technology can call 833-308-1988 Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m, to 7:00 p.m.
For the rest of Illinois: The state will take a portion of the remaining doses and deploy additional mobile vaccination teams to communities hit hardest by COVID-19 outside of Cook County. More information on these mobile vaccination teams will be shared in the coming weeks.