UMass Memorial planning Marlborough vaccine site

Photo | Grant Welker Marlborough Hospital

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By Grant Welker

UMass Memorial Health Care is planning a public COVID-19 vaccination site in Marlborough that could start giving doses as soon as Monday.

The program, if approved by the state, would join the healthcare system's existing vaccination sites at HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital and the Mercantile Center in downtown Worcester. The effort would be jointly run by Marlborough Hospital and the City of Marlborough.

The planned vaccine center would be held at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at 75 Felton St. and run weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

UMass Memorial, along with other major Massachusetts health systems, has had to temporarily stop reservations for vaccinations because of vaccination shortages. It has in the meantime begun mobile vaccination efforts, going to neighborhoods with high needs instead of requiring residents to make their way to vaccination sites. The mobile vaccine initiative has included five events in Clinton and Worcester, with a total of 18 such drives planned.

The planned Marlborough vaccine site was disclosed during an online public information session Wednesday in which UMass Memorial officials described ongoing care efforts, including at a field hospital at Worcester's DCU Center, as well as caution being taken for coronavirus variants that risk what has otherwise been promising trends in the past few weeks of quickly falling case numbers.

The DCU Center field hospital had only 12 patients Wednesday and could close in late March or even sooner if cases keep dropping quickly, UMass Memorial President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson said. The field hospital has treated more than 900 patients since last spring and at some points has accounted for about half of UMass Memorial's admissions, Dickson said.

Amid other encouraging trends, coronavirus test positivity rates conducted by the health system in Worcester have dropped by half since early January and now stand at 6.7%. Nearly three-fourths of the health system's health providers have gotten at least the first of two necessary vaccine doses.

UMass Memorial leaders continue to closely watch variants of the virus, including one originating in the United Kingdom accounting for 17 reported cases in Worcester County, by far the most in Massachusetts.

"I'm not particularly worried, but it is kind of that unknown," Dickson said.