Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, as arriving patients quickly overwhelmed hospitals from China to Italy to New York, officials converted all manner of public spaces into makeshift treatment hubs in a wartime-like effort to save as many people as possible. Now, as cases fall in many countries, public spaces are being changed once again—this time into mass vaccination hubs, where hundreds or even thousands of people can be inoculated against COVID-19 in a given day.
Below, see some of the world’s most impressive makeshift COVID-19 vaccination hubs, from New York’s Citi Field to Moscow’s Krylatskoye Ice Palace to the United Kingdom’s Salisbury Cathedral. We’ve also included images from smaller, perhaps less remarkable venues, like high school gyms and a bus-turned-mobile vaccination unit. Combined, these facilities will play a critical role in ensuring the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
A temporary COVID-19 vaccination site at Krylatskoye Ice Palace in Moscow on Feb. 1, 2021.
Valery Sharifulin—TASS/Reuters
A view of the cabins before the first COVID-19 vaccinations in the Festhalle hall in Frankfurt on Jan. 19, 2021.
Boris Roessler—Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Terezinha da Conceicao, 80, left, and Dulcinea da Silva Lopes, 59, become the first women to receive the COVID-19 vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd in front of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro on Jan. 18, 2021.
Bruna Prado—AP
Salisbury Cathedral functions as a COVID-19 vaccination site in Salisbury, England, on Jan. 23, 2021.
Tom Jamieson—The New York Times/Redux
A view of a temporary COVID-19 vaccination center in the Erika-Hess ice stadium in Berlin on Jan. 14, 2021.
Kay Nietfeld—Pool/Reuters
Health workers are vaccinated with the Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 at Argentine club River Plate’s basketball court in Buenos Aires on Feb. 2, 2021.
Juan Mabromate—AFP/Getty Images
A health worker administers a COVID-19 vaccine at a bar in Tel Aviv on Feb.18, 2021.
Gil Cohen-Magen—AFP/Getty Images
Cars lined up ata vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Jan. 29, 2021.
Philip Cheung—The New York Times/Redux
Olga D’arc Pimentel, 72, is vaccinated by a health worker with a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on the banks of the Rio Negro near Manaus, Brazil, on Feb. 9, 2021.
Michael Dantas—AFP/Getty Images
A woman gets in the VACCI’BUS, which goes village to village to enable people with reduced mobility to be easily vaccinated, in Bouleuse, France, on Jan. 20, 2021.
François Nascimbeni—AFP/Getty Images
Hundreds of people move through Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., as they receive their COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 1, 2021.
Joseph Prezioso—AFP/Getty Images
A health worker directs people arriving to get their COVID-19 vaccine at the Belgrade Fair in Belgrade, Serbia, on Jan. 25, 2021.
Andrej Isakovic—AFP/Getty Images
People arrive at Epsom Downs Racecourse as it opens as a COVID-19 vaccination center in Epsom, England, on Jan. 11, 2021.
Adrian Dennis—AFP/Getty Images
Preparations take place at Stockholm’s City Hall to convert the Nobel Prize venue into a COVID-19 vaccination site on Feb. 21, 2021.
Jonathan Nackstrand—AFP/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, and New York Mets baseball team owner Steve Cohen speak after a press conference to announce the opening of Mets Citi Field stadium as a COVID-19 Vaccine Mega Hub in Queens, N.Y., on Feb. 10, 2021.
Anthony Behar—Sipa/AP