KANSAS CITY, MO. — For those planning to attend the Gucci Mane concert August 1st at Liberty Memorial, they may be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The same goes for the Garth Brooks concert at Arrowhead Stadium August 7th.
“We are going to continue to take every single opportunity we can to create vaccine opportunities," said Mark Donovan, Kansas City Chiefs president. "We’ve got a little concert coming up here in August, where we will have 70,000 fans, 70 plus. We are working on having a vaccination site on site for the concert.”
Donovan and Mayor Quinton Lucas share the same goal in getting as many members of the community vaccinated as possible.
“We need to find a way to move beyond the rhetoric right now," Mayor Quinton Lucas said. "We have all been saying for a while, vaccinations are important, but what we are not doing is trying to reach our population that may not always be listening. You know we’ve done very well with a crowd that was excited about vaccinations at the beginning. We are not doing so great with some crowds that may have not heard out previous approaches.”
As the delta variant continues to spread, medical experts say the younger population is at a greater risk of contracting and spreading the virus.
“Young people are still very susceptible to COVID, and while it's a lower percentage of them who will get very sick, some of them do get very sick and some of them die,” said Matt Gratton, M.D. associate chief medical officer at Truman Medical Center.
Gratton emphasizes that vaccine incentives, including celebrities who can possibly influence or change the narrative, are important, especially to those who will listen.
“It’s pretty clear that not everyone wants to listen to what we have to say, and so anybody that they are willing to listen to, I think all the medical professionals are happy that they will listen,” Gratton said.
