Wake County launches mass COVID-19 vaccination site at PNC Arena
Cars lined up to get into PNC Arena’s parking lot on Thursday for the COVID-19 vaccine shot instead of a sporting event, the first time Wake County has offered a large-scale drive-through vaccination.
The county partnered with the Centennial Authority, WakeMed, Duke Health and UNC REX to host the event, which was by appointment only. A similar effort will take place on Saturday, with organizers expecting to vaccinate more than 2,100 people over the two days.
By adding the PNC Arena site, Wake County Public Health significantly increased the number of people it can vaccinate in a single day. Dr. Jason Wittes, Wake County’s pharmacy director, said the county health department now has the capacity to vaccinate about 1,000 people at PNC Arena, up to 800 people at its two existing vaccination sites on county property and an additional 100 people with teams sent into neighborhoods.
“It’s pretty remarkable that today we’ll be vaccinating close to 1,900 people in a single day,” Wittes said. “And it’s a mass vaccination thing, but it’s not a high capacity event. It’s not a thing like that, it’s just normal business here in Wake County.”
Organizers had three tents set up side-by-side near the arena’s east entrance, with vaccinations happening on both sides of each tent. Once people were vaccinated, they followed cones to a nearby parking lot where they waited for 15 minutes to make sure there were no adverse reactions.
While there were six drive-up stations on Thursday, Darshan Patel of Wake County Emergency Management said the 8,000-space parking lot is wide enough that organizers could quadruple that number, should supply allow it.
“As we look to the future and as potentially Group Three and beyond start to open up, we’re hoping that vaccine allocations go up, as well,” Patel said, “and we will need sites like this to be able to get vaccines out of the door quickly.”
State health officials have been asking vaccine providers to use up all of their first doses of vaccine each week.
Scaling the site would mean coordinating more staff with local hospitals, Patel said. Thursday’s effort involved about 100 people, many of whom were volunteers through the CapRAC Healthcare Preparedness Coalition.
Patti Jenkins was among those who got her shot Thursday morning. Jenkins said there was some wait time to get into the facility, but the vaccination process took mere minutes once she was registered.
The vaccine was injected into a tattoo of an alpaca on Jenkins’ arm, a keepsake of her time volunteering with animals in Peru.
Many of Jenkins’ family in South Carolina contracted COVID-19, she said, after pushing back against mask mandates and questioning the serious of the virus. She did not attend family Christmas this past year because they would not wear masks amid mounting COVID-19 cases.
Jenkins said that while she was eager to get the shot, she probably would have waited for a little bit had her families members not fallen ill. Now, even with it, she says she will keep taking precautions.
“I still intend to be safe, (wearing a) mask and all that stuff,” Jenkins said, “but I do feel a little bit safe, so especially after March 4, I’ll feel even safer.”
Right now, those who can receive the COVID-19 vaccine are limited to health care workers, staff and residents of long-term care facilities and anyone who is at least 65 years old. But on Feb. 24, any school or childcare staff will become eligible for the vaccine and on March 10 anyone who is a front-line essential worker will become eligible.
With more people eligible to take the shot and supplies hopefully opening up, efforts like the one at PNC Arena will become more important, said Dr. Chris DeRienzo, WakeMed’s chief medical officer.
“When I think about the way to safely and efficiently get vaccine to lots of folks, these kinds of large-scale, safe drive-through processes are super important,” DeRienzo said. He added that it is also important to continue staffing efforts that physically go into communities and ensure access for people who don’t have transportation or can’t make it to a site like PNC Arena.
Wake County Public Health received 6,650 doses of COVID-19 vaccine this week, with 2,150 set for the PNC Arena site. The county has asked the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services for 10,000 doses next week that would be used solely for the PNC Arena site, in addition to the 3,500 doses that would be used at health department sites.
Patel, the emergency management official, said there are discussions underway about the county “bundling” allocations with other providers in order to offer more shots at the arena site.
During a press conference this week, DHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen acknowledged that Wake County is still lagging behind others in vaccine doses per person. But, Cohen said, “10,000 is a very big number given the very limited pool of supply of vaccine that I keep talking about here.”
Even with the additional allocation this week, Wittes added, Wake remains in the bottom 20% of doses per person among North Carolina counties.
“One dose, one extra vial is better than nothing,” Wittes said, “so we’ll take what we receive, but the Wake way is to take care of our citizens and ask for what we think is necessary to get us up to speed with everyone else.”
This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 3:07 PM.