Hundreds were lined up outside a UW Medical Center clinic late Thursday night. (Felix Banel, KIRO Radio)
A strange scene took place in Seattle late Thursday night and early Friday morning, after hundreds of people got out of bed in hopes of receiving doses of COVID-19 vaccine that were hours away.
Appointing a vaccine causes headaches for Washingtonians
This came after the clinics were set up by Kaiser Permanente, which had 1,600 doses of vaccine that was to expire at 5:30 a.m. Friday, due to an unexpected freezer failure.
Feliks Banel from KIRO Radio found out on Thursday around 23:00, after receiving a message from a friend. 30 minutes later, he and his wife found themselves waiting outside one of those clinics on the UW Medical Center campus in northwest Seattle.
By 11:30 p.m., the parking lot was full, with hundreds of people already queuing. Forty-five minutes after they arrived, the line had not yet moved.
“The mood was calm and calm, like people waiting overnight to buy tickets for a concert that would take place several months in the future (as we did at least once in the 1980s for REM at Boston Garden),” he said described. “She never felt panicky or scary, but I found it somewhat surreal to go out so late for something so serious.”
After several searches in front of the line, they found that, in addition to the hundreds of people waiting outside, another 200 were lined up inside. It is assumed that the plant had only 500 total doses available for the assembled crowd.
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Around 12:15 p.m., a UW staff member began informing those who crossed a certain point in the line that “they have no chance of getting hit depending on the number of people in front and the number of remaining doses ”.
Feliks and his wife decided to pack up and go home after that announcement, ending a surreal night for everyone involved.
“It was a bizarre experience, completely consistent with all the other new and weird experiences of the last year or so – social distancing, lack of toilet paper, masking, COVID testing – and it gave me even more appreciation for my parents. much more traumatic individual experiences in war Europe 80 years ago, ”he detailed.
UW Medical Center told The Seattle Times that it managed to distribute every dose it had of the expiring vaccine. It is unclear whether the Swedish and Kaiser clinics have had similar success for their hospital clinics.