Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Governor Karyn Polito will join local leaders in Worcester Tuesday to share the announcement.
He is scheduled to hold a press conference on the topic Tuesday at noon. It will be held at the Worcester Senior Center, 128 Providence St., and livestreamed below.
The senior center is one of dozens of spaces across the state that opened as hubs to provide the vaccine to first responders.
“These men and women put their lives on the line regularly, back before we had COVID-19, and for the last 10 months, they kept on working the front lines, protecting and caring for residents across Massachusetts,” Baker said at a Jan. 4 press conference.
First responders were ranked as the third priority group within Phase 1 of the state’s vaccine distribution plan. Frontline medical workers were first, followed by residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
Rich MacKinnon Jr., president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts (PFFM), told MassLive in late December that about 60% to 70% of firefighters in the state plan to get vaccinated.
Worcester hopes to vaccinate about 2,200 first responders over the next two weeks.
“It’s really the first day of us playing offense on this disease,” City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said Monday. “The last nine or 10 months, we’ve been playing defense - wearing masks, social distancing, the shutdowns - to try to slow the spread of it, but this is the first real effort here, in terms of our first responders, to try to get people armed with the antibodies that the vaccine is going to provide.”
State health officials reported 4,239 new cases of the virus on Monday and 54 more deaths. The total number of active cases statewide stands at 92,405. The seven-day average of positive COVID tests is now 7.26%.
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