(Reuters) – The federal government is working with the state of Texas to build three mass vaccination sites, following last week’s announcement that it will build such sites in California, federal health officials said in a press briefing Wednesday.
Each site will be able to manage 10,000 photos a day, according to Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, and should start taking photos by Feb. 22.
The sites will be in the Dallas and Houston areas and will be operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to a state press release. One site will be AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, hosted by the Dallas Cowboys.
The federal government also plans to open vaccination centers in New York, Brooklyn and Queens on Feb. 24, each of which can handle about 3,000 fires a day, Zients said in an announcement with the New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
Both sites in New York will receive special vaccine allocations from the federal government and are intended to benefit black and Latino New Yorkers who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, Cuomo said.
Last week, the state of California said it was partnering with FEMA to open mass vaccination sites in Los Angeles and Oakland as part of a pilot program launched by President Joe Biden’s administration.
Both states said the goal of the program was to ensure that people in disadvantaged communities have access to vaccines.
Reporting by Rebecca Spalding; Editing by Franklin Paul, Jonathan Oatis and Bernadette Baum