United Center COVID vaccine sign-up continues with appointments available on Zocdoc
Zocdoc.com/vaccine hosting United Center appointments, which are also available by phone
CHICAGO (WLS) -- The United Center vaccine site is getting closer to being operational with thousands of people registered for appointments.
A team from the U.S. Army arrived Friday to support the work being done with a new tent is being erected for drive-up vaccinations.
To register for an appointment at the United Center, visit www.zocdoc.com/vaccine or call the multilingual hotline (312) 746-4835 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Members of the 101st Airborne arrived to help administer vaccines at the Near West Side mass vaccination site. There are appointments still available for the United Center, even as tens of thousands were booked on Thursday, causing some technical headaches for hopeful.
City officials say despite some early glitches with the appointment-making website ZocDoc and issues with the overwhelmed call in option, almost 28,000 seniors had registered by phone and online by mid-afternoon.
The site is offering 110,000 appointment slots but seniors will continue to have exclusive access to them until 4 p.m. Sunday.
The United Center site will be the biggest in the state. It will have a soft opening next Tuesday.
Another mass vaccination site opened Friday in Des Plaines and gave out 800 Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Appointments for all 18,000 spots were booked in a matter of hours Thursday. The Des Plaines site is for Cook County residents only.
It will be the state's first large-scale location to administer the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which is a single dose vaccination.
Appointments for the Des Plaines mass vaccination site can be made at vaccine.cookcountyil.gov or by phone at (833) 308-1988. The site will be open Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Illinois reported a new daily high in vaccinations Friday, with nearly 132,000 given in a single day.
In minority communities there is progress, but not enough, so the state has launched a new $10 million public messaging campaign to reduce vaccine hesitancy.
