A powerful snowstorm blanketed much of the Northeast on Monday, severely hampering public health efforts to get vaccinations into arms between Pennsylvania and New England.
Mass vaccinations at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of pro football’s Giants and Jets, were canceled, while New York City-run testing and vaccine sites were also closed for the day.
In Pennsylvania, state-run testing centers in Armstrong, Cumberland, Jefferson, Monroe and Wayne Counties were also shuttered due to snowfall.
“Folks stay off the roads, it’s dangerous. Job 1 right now is to protect people’s lives by dealing with the snow first,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told MSNBC on Monday morning, predicting up to 22 inches of snow could fall on America’s largest metro area.
‘We really want to get back to vaccinations tomorrow morning, God willing.”
Meanwhile, in New England, doctors and nurses stationed at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium, where baseball’s Red Sox and football’s Patriots play, trudged forward with vaccination efforts on Monday despite forecasts of 10 inches of snow for Boston.
“This is New England, we know the weather sometimes makes things harder, but we find a way,” according to a statement by CIC Health, which runs both the Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park mass vaccination sites.
But a mass vaccination center at the Reggie Lewis Center, a basketball and track and field venue in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, was closed with all appointments set for Monday postponed until Feb. 8, city officials said.
This is a developing story, please refresh here for updates.
Matteo Moschella and Kathryn Prociv contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
