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Fenway Park named as second mass vaccination site, joining Gillette Stadium

A photo of Fenway Park in April.Stan Grossfeld/ Globe Staff

The Baker administration announced Tuesday that Massachusetts would soon launch its second large-scale COVID-19 vaccination site at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox.

The baseball park vaccination center will open Feb. 1 for eligible Phase One groups, members of which can receive shots by appointment. The Fenway site will start by administering 500 doses a day, eventually ramping up to 1,000. The state’s first mass vaccination site at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough officially opened on Monday, and it is expected soon to administer up to 5,000 vaccinations per day.

CIC Health, a Cambridge technology company in charge of vaccine operations at Gillette Stadium, will also run the Fenway Park site, which is expected to stay open through the beginning of baseball season in early April. Members of the general public are not expected to receive the vaccine until at least April, based on the state’s vaccination timeline.

CIC Health is a subsidiary of the Cambridge Innovation Center, a co-working company founded and led by Tim Rowe. He helped launch CIC Health over the summer, focused initially on coronavirus testing, with well-known surgeon and writer Atul Gawande.

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At Fenway, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will oversee the vaccine administration, whereas at Gillette, Mass General Brigham is in charge.

In the Tuesday announcement, the state also said it is launching several other vaccination locations across Massachusetts.

Massachusetts will soon become one of the first states in the US to launch what is called the COVID-19 CDC Pharmacy Partnership — Phase 1. Starting this week, eligible groups will be able to receive a coronavirus vaccine at one of at least 15 CVS and Walgreens locations. The state said it expects the program to deliver 10,000 vaccine doses per week, specifically in “areas of the state where there is currently less access to convenient vaccine sites,” including Fall River, Salem, Hyannis, and Saugus.

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Another 40 sites will be added through the pharmacy partnership starting the week of Jan. 25, including some at Wegmans, Price Chopper, and Stop & Shop grocery stores.

Beginning this week, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst will become a “high capacity” vaccination site for eligible groups in Phase One of the state’s distribution timeline, serving those who live in Western Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is also launching an effort called the Hospital Depot Initiative to increase access to vaccines for independent, COVID-facing physicians, who are prioritized in the Phase One timeline. Certain hospitals — including Mass General Brigham, UMass Memorial Medical Center, and Baystate Medical Center — will serve as distribution centers for these clinical practices, which may not be able to administer the vaccine to their staff themselves due to their staff size or storage limitations.


Anissa Gardizy can be reached at anissa.gardizy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @anissagardizy8.