The University of Notre Dame is hosting one of Indiana’s mass vaccination clinics on campus Friday and Saturday. State health officials expect to administer just under 6,000 doses of the one shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Indiana residents who registered ahead of time. They say all appointments are already taken.
St. Joseph County Deputy Health Officer Dr. Mark Fox says the mass vaccination site is very encouraging and describes the shots as the best path forward to returning to normal. However he tempered the optimism by noting a thirty five percent increase in local COVID-19 cases over the last three weeks, and with that, come more hospitalizations.
“As vaccine eligibility expands, it’s going to be a while before we can meet that demand and it’s going to be critical that we maintain all our mitigation efforts with masking and physical distancing,” Fox said.
Notre Dame also announced Thursday that it would be offering Pfizer vaccines to students beginning in mid-April. A safety official for the university says they expect most students to voluntarily receive the shots, but were unclear whether it would be required.