New vaccine appointments for Giant Eagle clinic at Heinz Field go quickly; more to be added on Saturday

PITTSBURGH — Several thousand appointments for Covid-19 vaccination shots at Heinz Field were opened on Friday afternoon and quickly snapped up.

As of today, Giant Eagle has vaccinated more than 4,000 people inside the clinic, which is being run as a partnership with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Several thousand more appointments for March 8-9 were available online Friday but were gone within an hour.

Additional appointments will be added online on Saturday. Those appointments can be scheduled at the “Vaccine Clinics” option via the Giant Eagle online scheduling tool.

Cancer survivor Waffa Youseff was just one of the lucky people who got a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine this week at Heinz Field, and now she’s searching for an appointment for her husband, who is diabetic. So far, she hasn’t had any luck.

“After I got the shot here in Pittsburgh, I thought I would catch an appointment for my husband but I’m waiting and waiting,” Youseff said.

Giant Eagle spokeswoman Jannah Jablonowski said the retailer is glad the vaccine clinics are receiving such an overwhelming response. She said as they receive more vaccine supply, more clinic appointments will be opened.

“We are really excited to have such a strong customer response to this week’s clinic at Heinz field and we are really pleased to find out we were able to confirm additional vaccine supply, so we can extend the clinic to Monday through Wednesday of next week,” Jablonowski said. “We do ask our patients to be patient with us because as we do receive those supplies of the vaccine we are adding more appointments, so we encourage folks to check online often.”

The Heinz Field clinic is available only to people in Pennsylvania’s phase 1A priority group, which includes health care workers, people 65 and older and people aged 16-64 with certain chronic health conditions. It offered the first of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Recipients were given cards this week reminding them to return for their second dose in three weeks.

At this time there is no appointment availability for scheduling over the phone.

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Cox Media Group