650 COVID Vaccination Doses Scheduled in less than Five Minutes

Just in case you were wondering if any of the over 800 COVID 19 vaccine doses are still available for this Sunday’s mass vaccination clinic at the Adams Center, the answer is a very definite ‘no’.

There was plenty of time for people to prepare and have their phones and laptops ready when 1:00 p.m. arrived, and Public Information Officer Nick Holloway described what happened next.

“We wanted to give people a chance to, to prepare to register instead of just sort of slowly slipping it out there quietly and to see how that worked for us,” said Holloway. “Within just five minutes we filled up all of our online spots. There were about 650 spots available online.”

Holloway said the phone based registration went more slowly, but the remaining doses were gone very quickly.

“We reserved the rest for callers; those folks without internet access,” he said. “That process was done on a different forum, so that they didn't need to compete with the folks online who have a distinct advantage when they're trying to fill out the same form. We got those folks signed up, all 144 of them in just 43 minutes, so that takes a little longer because you need to go over forms with them on the phone, but the total was over 800 people and it went very quickly.”

Holloway said he and his staff were nervous before the 1:00 p.m. start up, hoping that their system would be robust enough to handle the demand.

“Yesterday we called up all of our partners in technology, our phone partners and our internet partners and just made sure that the technology would work when it was inundated,” he said. “We figured it would be hit hard, and it was hit hard very quickly, and they assured us that it would work but you just never know until you see it in action. We were nervous and it did work.”

Holloway referenced the COVID 19.missoula.co website for the numbers of Missoula County residents who will eventually be eligible to receive the various COVID 19 vaccines.

“Missoula County has about 99,800 people who are eligible to receive vaccine right now, and you can see that on our website COVID-19 dot missoula.co, which is also where you'll find what your vaccine options are,” he said. There's a dashboard on that website that tells everybody how many doses we have administered so far, how many first doses how many second doses and how many total folks are eligible.”

Holloway said state and county officials are working to obtain all the doses needed to vaccinate everyone in Missoula County, if they desire it.