In an interview prior to Super Bowl LV on Sunday, President Joe Biden said he will “absolutely” take the NFL up on its offer to use football stadiums as mass vaccination sites.
“I’m going to tell my team they’re available, and I believe we’ll use them,” said Biden.
The proposal was presented to the president in a letter from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent to the White House last week.
“The NFL and our 32 members clubs are committed to doing our part to ensure that vaccines are as widely accessible in our communities as possible,” Goodell wrote.
“To that end, each NFL team will make its stadium available for mass vaccinations of the general public,” he offered, “in coordination with local, state and federal health officials.”
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Seven NFL stadiums are already being used as vaccine sites in their cities, including the Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina; the Atlanta Falcons’ Mercedes-Benz Stadium, as well as stadiums in Baltimore, Miami, and the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium outside Boston.
“We can expand our efforts to stadiums across the nation more effectively,” Goodell shared, “because many of our clubs have offered their facilities previously as COVID testing centers, as well as election sites over the past several months.”
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are reportedly scheduled to take a virtual tour of the COVID-19 vaccination processes taking place at State Farm Stadium in Arizona today.
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During the Super Bowl on Sunday, Biden tweeted that he spent much of the day calling in to watch parties of troops who are deployed overseas.
“Every year, service members around the world gather to watch the Super Bowl — and tonight, I called in to watch parties in Kabul and on the USS Nimitz to thank them for their service. We are forever in debt to those who sacrifice so much to keep us safe,” he wrote.
Both the president and Dr. Jill Biden led the country in a moment of silence before the game to acknowledge the more than 400,000 Americans who have succumbed to the deadly coronavirus over the past year.
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