Pritzker, FEMA Give Unclear Signals on United Center Vaccinations
Governor JB Pritzker said Monday it was the Federal Emergency Management Agency that made the decision to stop residents from outside of Cook County from using a mass vaccination site at the United Center in Chicago. But a FEMA spokesperson cast doubt on Pritzker’s statement.
Just some 36 hours before the COVID-19 mass vaccination site at the United Center in Chicago opened to its first patients, Governor JB Pritzker announced the site would no longer take applicants outside the city of Chicago. While some appointments are expected to be reserved for suburban Cook County residents, no details have been released.
Why the federal site, using a new batch of federal vaccine, excludes eligibility from the suburbs and the rest of the state remains a mystery that Pritzker didn’t clear up Monday. Speaking at a bill signing in west-suburban Maywood, Pritzker said all changes for eligibility at the site were made by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Well, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, on Friday, decided that they wanted to change the process.,” Pritzker said. “They wanted to limit to the people who live in the City of Chicago, who met all of our ‘1-B+’ requirements, so, including comorbidities, people over 65, and frontline workers, et cetera. They wanted to change the criteria to only be about certain ZIP codes within the City of Chicago, because they wanted a greater focus on equity.“
But, legislative sources say that may not be the case. We’re told by some Democrats that there was pressure on the Governor from inside the city of Chicago that too many appointments were being “gobbled” up by suburbanites and downstaters.
In the release announcing the changes Sunday, FEMA Region 5 Acting Regional Administrator Kevin Singh implied FEMA was going along with the state’s changes.
“We support our partners in making these changes which will ensure those communities hardest hit by the virus are able to get the most effective tool to bringing it under control,” Singh said in the statement.
Pritzker said Monday, though, the equity concerns came from FEMA.
“FEMA, you know, has decided that not enough equity was coming out of that senior population or the future of allowing everybody in the state to use that United Center site. Over the weekend, we were informed of that,” he said. “There was a lot of discussion that went on to make sure that the change was made that they wanted. This is a federal site, just to remind you. These are doses that are delivered to the state and to the city and to the county from the federal government.”
FEMA spokesperson wouldn’t say if the agency proposed changing the criteria for the site, but told The Illinoize it was a “mutual agreement” to change eligibility for the site.
“After reviewing initial registration data for the United Center site, and having extensive discussions with our state and local partners, it was mutually agreed that these changes were necessary to ensure this goal was met,” the spokesperson said. “We will carefully continue to monitor progress and will encourage additional changes if needed.”
We asked if FEMA approached the state and city recommending the changes, but our message was not returned.
Pritzker says even though the United Center site won’t be available for residents outside of Cook County, there will be more vaccine available around the state.
“What we arranged was that doses from the federal government, separate from the allotment that comes to the state of Illinois normally, would be given to us on top of what we already get for the rest of the state of Illinois, so that we can now have federal mobile sites that can go to other parts of the state, so not just the United Center now, there will be federal mobile sites that we’re going to be able to deploy in other places, for example, in the collar counties.”
The number of vaccine doses available outside of the city wasn’t disclosed. The number of United Center appointments available from suburban Cook County also hasn’t been released. The state said Sunday some 40,000 of 110,000 appointments had been reserved, and 40% of those were made from outside the city. The state also said Sunday “tens of thousands” of appointments were still available.
The Governor’s office did not respond to our questions on the discrepancy between Prtizker’s statements and FEMA.