Kanye West’s Donda listening party doubled as a vaccination opportunity for attendees on Thursday night.
While the wait for West’s highly anticipated 11th studio album continues, fans were given the chance to get their COVID vaccination now, with the Mercedes-Benz Stadium doling out Pfizer shots during the event. The Atlanta sports and entertainment venue announced the effort over Twitter, with vaccines available to all attendees until 9:30 p.m. in sections 340 to 347.
The effort, which took place during the second of two album teases from the Grammy-winning rapper, came a day before the stadium announced another two-hour pop-up for Atlanta Falcons fans planning to attend the team’s open practice on Saturday. Prior to Thursday’s event, the stadium had hosted walk-up vaccine opportunities during several Atlanta United matches.
In partnership with the Fulton County Board of Health and Georgia Emergency Management Agency, the Atlanta stadium served as a vaccination site beginning in January, before an announcement from White House officials of an expanded effort beginning in March. At the time, federal health officials confirmed that the socially distanced FEMA mass vaccination site would be able to administer 6,000 shots a day, for a total of 42,000 a week.
At the time of its shuttering in June, the site had administered 300,000 doses, with up to as many as 12,000 doses a day. It’s unclear how many doses of the vaccine were delivered during the Donda event.
Home to the NFL Atlanta Falcons and MLS Atlanta United, the stadium previously served as a mass kitchen to prepare meals for front-line workers, in addition to supporting shelters and community food banks, during the summer of 2020.
The vaccination pop-up during the Donda listening party comes after West questioned the safety of vaccines in a July 2020 Forbes interview, telling the outlet that he was “extremely cautious” about it. In the interview, he cited debunked conspiracy theories about the vaccine.
“It’s so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed,” he falsely claimed. “So when they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious.”
He went on to call vaccines the “the mark of the beast” and said “they want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven.”
The listening party marks both the second public preview of West’s upcoming album and the second delay of its anticipated release. The Aug. 5 listening event was proceeded by one held on July 22 at the Mercedes-Benz stadium, where West has been living while he finishes work on his follow-up to the 2019 gospel-themed Jesus Is King.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to West’s reps for comment.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
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