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Hundreds of people lined up outside a clinic at the UW Medical Center on Thursday evening. (Feliks Banel, KIRO Radio)
One particular scene unfolded in Seattle late between Thursday night and Friday morning, after hundreds of people woke up from bed hoping to receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine within hours of an expiration.
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It came after clinics were set up by Kaiser Permanente, which had 1,600 doses of the vaccine that were due to expire at 5:30 a.m. on Friday due to an unexpected freezer failure.
Feliks Banel of KIRO Radio found out about 11 p.m. Thursday after receiving a text from a friend. Thirty minutes later, he and his wife found themselves waiting outside one of those clinics on the northwest campus of UW Medical Center in Seattle.
By 11:30 p.m. the parking lot was full, with hundreds of people already lining up. Forty-five minutes after their arrival, the queue still hadn’t moved.
“The atmosphere was calm and calm, like people waiting overnight to buy tickets for a concert that was to take place several months in the future (as I did at least once in the 1980s to REM at Boston Garden), ”he describes. “It was never panicked or scary, but it felt a bit surreal to be out this late for something so serious.
After a few lights in front of the line, they discovered that in addition to the hundreds of people waiting outside, 200 more were lined up inside as well. The facility only had 500 total doses for the assembled crowd.
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At around 12:15 a.m., a UW staff member began advising people beyond a certain point on the line that “they weren’t likely to get vaccinated depending on the number of people in front. and the number of doses remaining.
Feliks and his wife decided to pack their bags and head home after the announcement, wrapping up a surreal night for everyone involved.
“It was a bizarre experience, completely consistent with all the other new and weird experiences of the past year – social distancing, toilet paper shortage, masking, driving COVID test – and gave me even more appreciation for my parents. much more traumatic individual experiences in wartime Europe 80 years ago, ”he detailed.
UW Medical Center told the Seattle Times that it had successfully distributed all of the doses it had of the expiring vaccine. It is not known whether the Swedish and Kaiser clinics have had similar success for their hospital clinics.
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