In order to boost the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, the National Football League (NFL) has offered to transform each of the league’s 30 stadiums into mass vaccination centres, the American football league said.

Days ahead of the Super Bowl, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made the offer in a letter sent to President Joe Biden on Thursday.

“The NFL and our 32 member clubs are committed to doing our part to ensure that vaccines are as widely accessible in our communities as possible,” Goodell wrote in the letter, AFP reported.

“To that end, each NFL team will make its stadium available for mass vaccinations of the general public in coordination with local, state, and federal health officials.”

Already seven NFL teams — Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots — have made their stadiums available as vaccination sites.

“We can expand our efforts to stadiums across the nation more effectively because many of our clubs have offered their facilities previously as COVID testing centres as well as election sites over the past several months,” Goodell added.

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The Super Bowl will take place in Tampa, where 7,500 vaccinated frontline healthcare workers will attend as guests of the league in recognition of their work during the pandemic.

A lot of other sporting mega-sites have been converted into such vaccination centres, Earlier in the day, New York City officials on Friday unveiled a large-scale COVID-19 vaccination centre in Yankee Stadium, home to the baseball team New York Yankees, that aims to get more shots in the arms of residents in some of the city’s hardest-hit neighbourhoods.

The Bronx site has the capacity to handle 15,000 vaccination appointments in its first week of operation, according to the officials operating the facility.