Hundreds were lined up outside a clinic of the UW Medical Center late Thursday night. (Feliks Banel, KIRO Radio)
A bizarre scene played out early Thursday night until Friday morning in Seattle after hundreds of people woke themselves up out of bed in hopes of receiving COVID-19 vaccine doses that were hours away.
The appointment of vaccines is a headache for Washingtonians
This comes after clinics were set up by Kaiser Permanente, with 1,600 vaccine doses expiring at 5:30 a.m. Friday thanks to an unexpected freezer.
Feliks Banel from KIRO Radio found out about 23:00 on Thursday after receiving a text from a friend. Thirty minutes later, he and his wife were waiting outside one of the 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 standing in line. Forty-five minutes after their arrival, the rope still did not move.
“The mood was calm and serene, like people waiting overnight to buy tickets for a concert that would take many more months in the future (as I did at least once in the 1980s for REM in Boston Garden) , “he said. describe. “It never felt panicky or scary, but it seemed a bit surreal to come out so late for something so serious.”
After some exploration in front of the queue, they found out that in addition to the hundreds of people waiting outside, there were also another 200 standing in the queue. The facility presumably had only 500 total doses available for the compound crowd.
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Around 12:15 a staff of UW’s people start notifying at some point that ‘they are unlikely to get a chance based on the number of people ahead and the amount of doses left.’
Feliks and his wife decided after the announcement to pack up and go home and end a surreal evening for all involved.
‘It was a bizarre experience that completely matched all the other new and strange experiences of the past year – social distance, toilet paper shortages, concealment, passing COVID testing – and gave me even more appreciation for my parents’ appreciation much more traumatic individual experiences in wartime Europe 80 years ago, ”he explained.
The UW Medical Center told The Seattle Times that it had managed to distribute every dose that the vaccine had. It is unclear whether Swedish and Kaiser clinics have achieved similar success for their hospitals’ clinics.