With less demand, UK will soon ‘de-mobilize’ the Kroger Field COVID-19 vaccine clinic
Due to dipping demand, the University of Kentucky will likely soon “de-mobilize” the university’s large-scale COVID-19 vaccine clinic beneath the stands of Kroger Field.
“At a day coming soon, likely in the next few weeks, we will de-mobilize that Kroger Field site and move back to our clinic operation in UK HealthCare,” Eric Monday, UK’s executive vice president for finance and administration, said at a university board meeting Tuesday morning.
Monday did not give an exact date for when the site might shut down.
Currently, the clinic is mostly providing booster shots — the second jab in the two-shot series for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said.
“The number of people scheduling for first doses has declined significantly in recent weeks,” Blanton said.
In early April the clinic was averaging about 4,000 or more doses per day, Blanton said. Now the clinic is closer to 1,000 doses per day.
As of last week, the clinic — which opened in late January — had administered approximately 238,974 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, university data displayed during a presentation put on by Monday showed.
After the site is closed, the university will return to distributing the vaccine through UK HealthCare’s clinics.
The university is in the process of determining what the scheduling process for future appointments will look like, Blanton said. Currently, appointments are made online at ukvaccine.org.
The process will likely be the same, Blanton said. However the location will likely change and the university will communicate that clearly in the coming days.
De-mobilizing the Kroger Field clinic will have no impact on other vaccine sites that the university has helped set up across the state, Blanton said.
