DENVER — It has been several months since Coors Field attracted thousands of visitors. That changes this weekend, but not because of a baseball game. UCHealth is holding a drive-through event in the Coors Field parking lot with a goal of vaccinating 10,000 Coloradans ages 70 and up against COVID-19.
The weekend of January 23, UCHealth conducted a trial run where they successfully administered 1,000 doses of the vaccine.
“I know that everybody is very anxious about getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Richard Zane, the chief innovation officer at UCHealth. “Everybody needs to be patient...we will get everyone vaccinated in due time, as soon as we get enough vaccines.”
Colorado VoicesUCHealth Mass Vaccination
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UCHealth will administer 10000 COVID-19 vaccines this weekend.
Zane said there are three ways people can register to receive a vaccine from UCHealth:
Existing UCHealth patients over the age of 70 will automatically receive a randomized invitation to make a vaccination appointment
Register at the UCHealth website (Zane stressed you do not have to be a patient with UCHealth to make an appointment)
Call the UCHealth COVID-19 hotline at 720-462-2255
Colorado is currently in Phase 1B of its vaccination distribution plan. Phase 1B prioritizes Coloradans 70 years old and older.
According to state health officials, that age group has made up roughly three-quarters of Colorado’s COVID-19 deaths. Governor Polis said the state is on pace to meet its goal of vaccinating 70% of the 70 and above population by the end of February. This drive-through event at Coors Field will help.
Zane said during the trial run, the longest anybody had to wait in line was 26 minutes. He believes that UCHealth has the capacity to vaccinate 8,000 people per day, but that limited vaccine supply is their greatest challenge. Polis concurs.
“Colorado is ready to immediately use three to four times as many vaccines as we are currently getting each week right away,” the governor said in a statement January 25.
The UCHealth event runs from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The event is open to anyone in Colorado so long as they’re willing to drive to Denver.
“The entire purpose of this...is to get Colorado back to normal,” Zane said. “Getting vaccinated is not just an individual choice for your own health, but it’s also a societal obligation. The faster and broader we vaccinate, the faster we get back to normal.”
More information on the vaccine in Colorado, including data on how many people have been vaccinated and what phase we’re in, is available here.
Even more COVID-19 data are available on the Colorado School of Public Health’s COVID-19 data dashboard.
The dashboard tracks COVID-19 case numbers and risk factors on a county-by-county basis, and also provides information on racial demographics, economic activity, and underlying health risk specific to each county in Colorado.
Dr. Jonathan Samet, Dean of CSPH, said the new dashboard is beneficial to individual communities because “modeling data at the state level is not sufficiently granular for local decision-making.”
