A malfunction of the freezer at Kaiser Permanente on Thursday led to an impromptu effort to vaccinate people who might appear in the middle of the night.
Once the problem was discovered, 800 doses of the Modern vaccine were given to UW Medicine, and almost 600 were given to the Swedish Medical Center.
The Swedish Hospital sent a tweet saying that they needed people to receive the vaccines.
“URGENT: We have 588 appointments from MODERN DOSE 1 available on January 28 from 11 pm to January 29 2 am Click on the link to book. For additional slots until 2 am, click on SHOW MORE and select TOMORROW. It must be Phase 1a or Phase 1B / Layer 1. ”
These layers include essential workers and older people who wake up at this time of night. Early in the morning, these layers would not matter.
People came in droves – by car, on foot, willing to spend hours under cover of the night and in the parking lot.
At 2 am, people got tired of standing and sat on the concrete. The hospital staff came by periodically to count how many people remained and how many would be vaccinated overnight. It looked like they had sued about half the group there.
At 3 am, the team said that about 30 vaccines were missing, but would expire at 3:30 am. Police, students, anyone can take it now. That includes this reporter who was one of the last to get vaccinated and managed to wake up someone else to get in at the last minute, after a series of nightly phone calls.
When night became morning, more employees arrived and greeted the crew during the night. His efforts were not in vain: no vaccine was wasted.
During a press conference on Friday, Dr. Jeff Duchin, of the Seattle King County Department of Public Health, said he was proud of the collaborative effort between the three healthcare providers.
“We told them [health care workers] that it would be better to give this vaccine to someone who was not eligible if he couldn’t find enough eligible people in the middle of the night, than to throw it away. This is the last thing we want to do. “
There were other stories of surprise vaccine availability, from pharmacists saying over the loudspeaker that vaccine doses were available before the store closed.
Recently, a vaccination team in Josephine County, Oregon, got stuck on a snow-covered highway and drove from car to car until they found people willing to get the vaccine.
Kaiser Permanente says he is inspecting all of his refrigerators to make sure they are working properly.
Starting February 1, King County will also open two new vaccination sites in Auburn and Kent. Public Health claims to have enough vaccines for 500 people a day, 6 days a week, with the goal of serving those who are most at risk from Covid-19 and face barriers to access the vaccine through traditional health systems.
If you are eligible for a vaccine, apply here for an appointment.