The last photos were taken at around 3:45 am, on the street, literally with no time to lose.
Throughout the night, staff and volunteers from the Swedish Health Service in Seattle were rushing to administer hundreds of doses of the coronavirus vaccine scheduled to expire early in the morning after the freezer malfunctioned. Finally, they had only a few dozen shots left and about 15 minutes to put them in people’s arms.
“We were literally like … who can bring people here? People started texting and calling and we were just counting down,” said Kevin Brooks, Swedish chief operating officer, who helped coordinate everything at his clinic. at the University of Seattle. “Thirty-seven. Thirty-five. Thirty-three … People were showing up and running down the hall.”
In the latest photos, the team and volunteers ran out onto the road on a cold night, at one point shooting at someone through a car window, Brooks said. An elderly woman with slippers was photographed rolling up her sleeve on the sidewalk at the time the clock ended.
It was a familiar story: in the face of expiring vials, health professionals distribute doses of vaccines at high speed, sometimes to whom they can find. These makeshift gifts have sometimes been controversial, with waste and unpredictable vaccinations generating anger. The authorities are juggling rigid plans to prioritize the most vulnerable with the urgency to inoculate as many people as possible against a deadly virus as quickly as possible.
In the end, none of the more than 1,600 doses due to expire in Seattle were wasted, health officials said, after a colossal confusion that demonstrated both the enormous pressure on those millions of immunized Americans and the hope that those doses of vaccine brought. Shooting shots across the country have been plagued by bottlenecks, frustrations and disagreements over who should receive protection first. But Thursday night and Friday morning were full of purpose and joy, with anxious people lined up in pajamas, frantic activity and, at one point, a happy birthday performance.
From the early days of the pandemic, Brooks said: “We are the front line of this and it has been a long year. And now we are also bearing the great blessing and burden of vaccinating the community.”
“The term we use is, we are tired and inspired,” he said. “And those two things are true at the same time.”
The race started around 9 pm, when employees from Swedish and another group, UW Medicine, discovered that a cooling problem had caused the doses to melt at Kaiser Permanente.
Jenny Brackett, assistant administrator at UW Medicine, was finishing up the night at home when the news came. She said she had just read about another group that struggled to use expired doses of vaccine a few days earlier. Stuck on a closed highway and with little time to lose, Oregon health care professionals began giving vaccinations to other drivers in the middle of a snowstorm.
“When I got the call, they said, ‘It’s like our snowy moment,'” said Brackett.
“I knew we could get vaccinators there,” she said. “So, I had a lot of faith in that element. I knew that our nursing team would overcome it.” Brackett was ready to go to the hospital around 10 pm, she said, and doses of the vaccine arrived about an hour later.
“I was a little like, how are we going to get 800 people to show up, you know, at 10 or 11 pm?” she said. “But it proved to be no problem, because, you know, the word spread like wildfire.”
Authorities say they have done their best to administer vaccines to people who should be vaccinated in advance. This meant high-risk health workers and first responders, residents and nursing home staff, as well as people aged 65 and over and people aged 50 and over living in multigenerational families.
“URGENT: We have 588 appointments of MODERN DOSE 1 available on January 28 from 11 pm to January 29 2 am”, tweeted Swedish Hospital at 10:59 pm Pacific time, with a link to reserve places, limiting registrations to priority groups already released to receive the vaccine.
At UW Medical Center-Northwest, people like Brackett cried out for people 65 and older, walking up and down in a line of hundreds that meandered through the corridors and then spread out.
“I was a little concerned that the line might not be very lively,” she said. “You know, I’m letting the others go first. But that wasn’t the answer I got. In fact, the crowd kind of applauded.”
And at all locations, officials and officials said, workers were calling union leaders, police and fire officials, even their local supermarkets, in an effort to set the doses – if they couldn’t go to current vaccination levels, at least could alert people close to the queue.
In the end, many shots went to the general public. “The general rule was not to waste anything,” said Cassie Sauer, president of the Washington State Hospital Association, which said it had sent message updates to the governor’s office and public health officials overnight.
For some observers, the overnight success in Seattle seemed like proof that the country’s immunization process could be faster. “Idea: vaccinate with this level of urgency all the time,” tweeted a journalist.
Sauer said it is not that simple – now, at least.
“My father is 80, Parkinson’s disease and some mobility problems,” she said. “He can’t stand in line for hours, waiting for the vaccine. He needs an appointment.”
“I think it works as a kind of unique emergency and it can work when we get to the point where we are actually giving vaccines to the general public,” she added. “But at this point … I think we need to think strategically about equity as well.”
Esmy Jimenez, a 27-year-old reporter, was covering the mess on Thursday night, but she also got a chance. In the end, she called her best friend, her former roommate and other journalists, as the team said her last doses were about to expire.
“Get in the car now,” she ordered.
Carolyn Grant, a longtime leading nurse at UW Medicine, volunteered for rapid vaccinations. She came out of retirement last March for several months to help with drive-through test sites, “watching the numbers across the country every day.”
On Thursday night, she was thrilled to see so many people migrating to the vaccine that others in the United States – still skeptical – were refusing.
At 64 and a half years old, Grant missed the cut to the last level of immunizations. By 1 am, however, she said, the queue had slowed and she had her chance.