ALABAMA – For one beautiful week, Alabama’s drive-thru vaccine clinics operated so smoothly, you’d think they also offered waffle-cut fries.
“People were commenting that we had a Chick-Fil-A type process,” said Maegan Austin, spokeswoman for Vaughan Regional Medical Center, which ran a drive-thru clinic in Selma that gave out its entire allotment of 5,000 vaccine doses in less than three days.
In Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Anniston and Tuscaloosa, existing clinics hummed with new efficiency, bolstered by extra doses of supply.
And that efficiency paid off for a state that has struggled with one of the slowest rollouts in the nation. According to the state’s vaccine dashboard, Alabama gave out 149,201 doses of vaccine last week, 35,918 more doses than it gave the week before, an increase of 31%.
In Dothan, a parking deck at Southeast Health became a six-lane drive-thru clinic that gave out 6,100 shots in five days, with patients getting out in less than half an hour, even with a 15-minute observation period to make sure there’s no allergic reaction after the shot.
“From the time you drive into the parking deck, register, receive your information, receive the vaccine and drive out, it’s about a total throughput time of a little bit less than eight minutes,” said Taylor Williams, vice president of Southeast Health Medical Group.
“The total time is about 23 minutes as a whole before you’re driving off campus.”
Supply still limited
But that increased rate will almost certainly drop this week. On top of the weather-related cancellations, Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said last week that the state simply was not receiving enough doses of vaccine to keep these clinics running.
“Clearly this is a successful model, we’d like to continue doing it,” Harris said last week. “But we don’t, at the moment, have the ability to continue doing these week after week.”
The Montgomery and Selma clinics did not reopen this week. Austin said the Selma clinic will operate one day a week going forward, with supplies from the ADPH, but will reopen when it’s time to give the second doses to people who got the vaccine last week, or whenever the hospital can get enough doses to reopen.
The Montgomery drive-thru clinic at the old Montgomery Mall, which gave out 8,000 doses last week is on hold indefinitely.
“Until we have more vaccine allocated to us, we have to stand by and wait,” said Montgomery City/County EMA Director Christina Thornton.
Dr. Sarah Nafziger, who leads the vaccine distribution effort at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s four sites in the greater Birmingham area, said supply of vaccine is still the greatest limiting factor.
“We have the capacity to deliver, maybe even up to 20,000 doses of vaccine per week at UAB, with the current structure that we have in place,” Nafziger said. “We haven’t received that much vaccine and frankly, I don’t know what it’s going to look like in the future. I don’t know that anyone does.”
One-week surge results
UAB administered 12,139 doses last week at four locations, including drive-thru clinics at UAB Hospital Highlands parking deck, the Hoover Met Complex baseball stadium parking lot, Parker High School and a more traditional vaccine clinic at the Margaret Cameron Spain Auditorium on UAB’s campus.
The University of South Alabama clinic in Mobile continues to give about 1,000 shots per day by appointment after giving 8,300 last week.
Southeast Health in Dothan planned to scale its six-lane drive-thru down to three lanes, Williams said. They expect to receive about 3,000 doses a week going forward, about half the amount they gave out last week. If they had the supply, Williams said they could administer about 2,000 shots per day.
“The state is committed to 3,000 vaccines a week for us, so that is what we will scale to,” Williams said.
The Huntsville Hospital clinic at the Jaycee Community Building at John Hunt Park gave out 12,000 shots last week, up to 2,000 per day. It’s not a drive-thru, but uses two large rooms at the Community Building, one for registration and giving the shot and another for the 15-minute observation period after.
Lessons learned
Representatives from most of the hospitals running the mass vaccine sites say the operations got smoother as the days went by.
“We try to pick us apart,” said Joyce Thomas, RN, manager of emergency preparedness for Huntsville Hospital. “We’re trying so hard to make any improvements. Any little thing.”
Thomas said the Huntsville clinic added more wheelchairs and even began using golf carts to help convey older patients from their cars to the vaccine sites. They’ve increased the number of umbrellas available during inclement weather. The clinic has shown it can administer 2,000 shots per day, if they have the shots to give.
In Montgomery, Thornton said the clinic got smoother every day it was open, peaking at 1,955 shots given in a day.
“We’ve improved it every day,” she said. “Adding additional parking lots and additional people out writing numbers down as soon as people came in. We went to Post-it notes when it was raining. There were so many things we had to adjust on the fly.”
At the end of the day, the operations, though hectic and unprecedented, offer Alabamians a chance to get vaccinated against a disease that’s killed 9,300 people in Alabama and more than 485,000 nationwide.
“It’s amazing about the emotions you see,” said Thomas in Huntsville. “This is a magical place. As healthcare workers, we want to make people better and help them, and we’re able to do that. It’s given us the power to heal and that’s what healthcare workers want to do.”
