Middlesbrough to Open Large Vaccination Centre at Riverside Stadium

Middlesbrough Football Club have announced that a large vaccination centre will open at the Riverside Stadium from Monday 22 March 2021.

With more than 25 million people now having received their first vaccination in the fight against Coronavirus, the Riverside Stadium will be the fifth large vaccination centre in North East England.

With large vaccination centres open 12 hours a day across all seven days of the week seeing up to 1,000 patients per day, the Riverside Vaccination Centre will serve to complement the current 90+ local GP-led vaccinations centres on Teesside.

This site has been chosen due to the accessibility of its location and transport links and will be manned by clinical staff alongside trained vaccinators, administrative staff and a range of volunteers to ensure the service runs smoothly and safely.

Middlesbrough FC manager, Neil Warnock has already had his vaccine and is keen to ‘urge everyone to follow suit as soon as they get the opportunity’ in order to enable life to start moving forward and return to a near-normal routine pre pandemic

Warnock also spoke of his pride in Middlesbrough and Riverside Stadium for setting up this vaccination centre, saying: “I’m proud of the football club being able to do this at the Riverside.

“To have our home stadium as a vaccination centre and to be able to work with the NHS and the local community on this is terrific”.

North East and North Cumbria Chief Operating Officer for NHS COVID Vaccination Programme, Professor Neil Watson believes that the decision in opening the Riverside Stadium as a vaccination centre is ‘giving even more people the opportunity to have their vaccine.”

South Tees Joint Director of Public Health, Mark Adams meanwhile declared the decision to use Riverside Stadium as ‘another step in the direction of normality.’

Adams also spoke of his gratitude to the club for their support, saying: “I’m grateful to the football club for their support. The centre builds on the excellent work by the primary care networks and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.”