Feb. 19, 2021 – COVID-19 vaccination centers, set up on a large scale nationwide, could significantly accelerate the number of Americans vaccinated. This is evident from new research that provides a detailed model for this.
Based on the proposed model, 350 million doses could be administered in 100 days, says study co-author Sunderesh Heragu, PhD, professor of industrial engineering and management at Oklahoma State University. That’s enough to cover the adult US population and a few more.
Heragu originally developed the pandemic swine flu (H1N1) model in 2009 and it was used to vaccinate more than 19,000 people in 1½ days at a mass vaccination site in Louisville, KY. While drive-through vaccinations aren’t new even with the current pandemic, Heragus Model includes specific guidelines for maximizing efficiency. President Joe Biden’s goal is to have 100 million COVID vaccine shots by April 30, his 100th day in office. According to the CDC, 57.5 million shots had been fired by Thursday.
The closest I’ll ever see NASCAR is when I drive through the vaccine on Texas Motor Speedway for my second dose.
– Lindsay (@ Lindsay_007) February 12, 2021
The proposed new model, the developers say, could more than triple that number in 100 days.
The total US population is 332 million, including 77 million children who are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine. If only the adult population of 255 million is taken into account, of which 57.5 million have already been vaccinated, Heragu says numerous second doses could also be given at the drive-up mass injection sites during those 100 days if the new model is used.
How the model works
The model assumes that 350 mass vaccination centers will be set up nationwide and vaccinated 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each location would fire 10,000 shots a day for a total of 1 million vaccinations per location over 100 days, or 350 million shots in total, Heragu says.
At the mass vaccination stations currently in operation, the number of shots is much lower than his target of 10,000. “It’s usually 1,000 to 2,000 a day,” says Heragu.
To meet the 10,000 goal, each location should include:
- Five tents, each tent serving two cars at the same time
- Four nurses stations in each tent with two nurses per station for a total of 40 nurses per site (or more if they reduce shifts to less than 8 hours)
The model plugs into several other scenarios, e.g. B. When vehicles drive through the construction site at a speed of 7.5 miles per hour and the waiting time for drivers is around 25 minutes. The simulated model, based on the Louisville vaccinations, includes the time to sign a consent form. If a consent form is filled out online before the vaccination appointment, it could take 2 or 3 minutes, according to Heragu, and add to the total number of vaccinations.
It worked in Louisville
At the Louisville location, where the model was used in 2009, 19,000 pictures were taken in just 1½ days, according to Heragu. This vaccination program included options for passage and inspection. “They had 19,000 doses, and more than 12,000 were administered through the transit and about a third through the on-site visit,” he says.
Drive-through clinics can vaccinate many more people per hour than walk-up clinics, Heragu says. As part of the Louisville vaccination project, 424 people per hour were vaccinated in the walk-through area and 762 per hour in the drive-through location.
Other advantages of the drive-thru vaccination
When vaccination was introduced in Louisville, people preferred the drive-through option, Heragu says. In some places, he says, “we often had the inspection point that nobody waited for and the drive through with a waiting time of 30 minutes. The guard would say, “You can leave the passage [and go to the walk-up.]'”
Usually, Heragu says, people have decided to wait in the passage. Convenience and habit could explain this preference, he says. “People are used to making a drive through for a bank transfer, for breakfast, even dry cleaning, and more recently, voting.”
Health concerns are another reason many prefer the tailgate option, he suspects. “When people are in their own car, they are not concerned about contracting the virus,” he says.
Children who are in the car with their parents are often more comfortable in the car, and parents of infants don’t have the extra job of getting infants in and out of car seats to use walk-in spaces, he says.
perspective
The pass-through option for vaccination is definitely efficient, says Michael F. Gorman, PhD, professor of business analytics and operations in the School of Business at the University of Dayton, Ohio. He is editor of the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, which published the study.
“The numbers you could do with you [drive-thru] Plant like this are very high. We have a really efficient way of delivering it, with high capacity and low cost. “
The unknown is, of course, how reliable the vaccine supply is. He agrees that all of the doses estimated in the model could be given in 100 days if there were enough vaccines. [but] only if there are enough vaccines. “
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