Today, the White House announced that the Administration will be partnering with the State of Wisconsin to build a new major Community Vaccination Center (CVC) in Milwaukee.
The new CVC will be located at the Wisconsin Center, in Milwaukee. Set to open April 6, the center will operate as a type 2 vaccination center with the capacity to administer 3,000 shots per day. FEMA has currently obligated over $47M and deployed over 90 federal personnel to the State of Wisconsin to support vaccination operations statewide.
Currently, our 25 opened mass vaccination centers have a combined ability to administer over 95K shots per day. Already, they have administered over 2 million shots in some of America’s most underserved neighborhoods. With today’s announcement of the Wisconsin Center in Wisconsin, along with the rollout of centers in Maryland and Tennessee we will have announced a total of 30 federally-run mass vaccination centers.
The White House is deploying federal teams immediately to work hand-in-hand with the State and local jurisdictions, and we expect these sites to start getting shots in arms in the coming weeks. These CVCs will utilize primarily federal staff in support of state and local governments. During this pilot period, the federal government will provide limited direct allocation to the site through FEMA — as it does through federal entities for other federal programs.
The Wisconsin Center was identified using a range of criteria, most central to those is the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). This tool was created to help emergency response planners and public health officials identify and map communities that will most likely need support before, during, and after a hazardous event. The index takes into consideration critical data points, including socioeconomic status, household composition, minority status, languages, housing type and transportation.
Located in the heart of Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Center is located in a medically underserved area with and sits in an area with above average access to public transit and high walkability according to the EPA Smart Location Database. Such accessibility enables many lower income communities and those with mobility restrictions to easily and safely reach the CVC.
The site is accessible to approximately 1.3 million people within a 30-minute drive and approximately 20,000 people within a 1-mile walking radius. Milwaukee has a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) of 0.5449. Within a 30-minute drive time, about 40 percent of people are a minority and 14 percent of people are over the age of 65. There are also 79,000 households below poverty.
The goal of establishing these joint federal pilot centers is to continue to expand the rate of vaccinations in an efficient, effective and equitable manner, with an explicit focus on making sure that communities with a high risk of COVID-19 exposure and infection are not left behind.
Vulnerable Milwaukee Communities:
- The Wisconsin Center is located near dense population centers in the Milwaukee area, including ZIP Codes and towns that have outsized risk of exposure to COVID-19 throughout the duration of the pandemic.
- The site serves 1.3 million people within a 30-minute drive time.
- ~40% are minorities
- ~14% are elderly (65 years of age and older)
- ~79,000 households are below poverty
- The site serves approximately 20,000 people within a 1-mile walk
- ~46% are minorities
- ~7% are elderly (65 years of age and older)
- ~2200 households are below poverty
