Chick-fil-A manager revolutionized his city’s COVID vaccination wait times

It is not surprising that there have been some problems in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine across America. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were developed in just ten months. Then, supply chains were hastily put in place to get the vaccine to the world’s third largest country.

Add to that, medical professionals need massive amounts of supplies like needles and vials to deliver the injections, and vaccination centers designed to accommodate thousands of people have been brought together overnight.

In most cases, these sites were created by local governments with little experience in mass vaccination. So when a drive-thru coronavirus vaccination site in South Carolina was backed up, the city’s mayor called someone he knew he could help, a local director of Chick-fil-A. .

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No one knows how to get cars around a drive-through like the people in the fast food industry. The whole business model is about getting people in and out as quickly as possible.

On January 22, patients lined up at Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant were waiting more than an hour for their vaccinations. So the city’s mayor, Will Haynie, called Jerry Walkowiak, the manager of a nearby Chick-fil-A.

“When I heard about it, I called Jerry and asked if he was going to help us,” Haynie said according to WPBF. “After examining it, he said, ‘There’s your problem there. It’s saved because you have one person who is saving people. “Then he showed us how to do it right.”

Walkowiak called in a few volunteers, made some adjustments to the process, and then started waving people.

Chick-fil-A has been the subject of boycotts for nearly a decade after it was revealed in 2012 that its chairman, chairman and CEO Dan T. Cathy had donated millions of dollars to organizations considered to be hostile to LGBT rights. In November 2019, the company announced that it would not donate money to two groups that have been criticized as being anti-LGBT, the Salvation Army and the Christian Athletes Community, in 2020. Although the company does not never said if this change of charity the donations will be permanent.

But when it comes to this particular brand manager, his approach has been nothing short of a breakthrough for people trying to get the shot.

“We saw a little glitch in their drive-thru system, and we needed more people, so we got together some of the wonderful Rotary volunteers and we went over there and just got to speed the game up. recording, ”Walkowiak said.

With the new system in place, the wait time was drastically reduced from an hour or more to just 15 minutes.

Haynie and Walkowiak’s partnership is a great example of communities coming together to do whatever they can to get people vaccinated so we can all come out of the pandemic.

“Jerry got a phone call and gave it all up because he knows the release of this vaccine is a game-changer,” Haynie said. “This is what the light looks like at the end of the long Covid tunnel.”