Mass COVID-19 vaccine site coming to Tysons Corner next week

The former Lord & Taylor store at Tysons Corner Center will serve as a large-scale COVID-19 vaccination site for Fairfax County starting on Tuesday (April 20).

The Fairfax County Health Department announced today (Friday) that the new Community Vaccination Center is being organized by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and Virginia Department of Health and will be operated by the disaster response companies AshBritt and IEM, which are both under contract with VDEM.

Fairfax County is providing support to the state on the site through its health department and Office of Emergency Management.

Located at 1961 Chain Bridge Road, this will be Fairfax County’s first mass COVID-19 vaccine site, though Inova set up a large-scale facility in the City of Alexandria that is open to Fairfax County residents.

“We are excited that we can offer our residents another large-scale COVID-19 vaccination site, this time in the Tysons area, which is easily accessed by several bus routes and located within walking distance of the Tysons Corner Metro station along the Silver Line,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said in a statement.

According to McKay, the Tysons Corner site will be able to vaccinate about 3,000 individuals per day.

“Paired with the other sites we have throughout the county, [this] will greatly impact Fairfax’s vaccination rates and move us closer to herd immunity,” he said.

The county says that it will initially partner with the community vaccination center to finish giving first-dose vaccinations to the remaining individuals on its registration waitlist from Phase 1. As of 2:30 p.m. today, there are about 22,600 people on the waitlist.

The site will subsequently be listed on Vaccine Finder as an available option for all individuals 16 and older to schedule an appointment. Fairfax County plans to join the rest of Virginia in opening vaccine eligibility to the general adult population in Phase 2 on Sunday (April 18).

The county announced earlier this week that it will retire its own registration system once Phase 2 begins. Anyone who hasn’t joined the waitlist by Sunday will use Vaccine Finder to locate available sites and then schedule their appointment directly with the provider, an approach that county officials say will give people more options and flexibility.

Individuals will also be able to contact Fairfax County’s new call center system 703-324-7404 or Virginia’s call center at 1-877-829-4682 for assistance in obtaining a vaccine appointment.

The pace of vaccinations is expected to initially slow down when Fairfax County and all other jurisdictions in Virginia enter Phase 2, due to both the influx of newly eligible individuals and the indefinite halt in distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

McKay reported in a newsletter last night (Thursday) that Fairfax County expects to receive just 30,000 doses per week for the next few weeks before supplies increase again later in the spring and summer.

As a comparison, the county health department got 65,710 first and second doses from the Virginia Department of Health for the week of April 5-11, according to its vaccine data dashboard.

“The high demand for vaccination in Fairfax County combined with the available vaccine supply will continue to be a challenge, especially in the initial weeks of Phase 2,” McKay said. “With patience and care, we will get everyone vaccinated.”