GREENSBORO, N.C. — It was a successful first day at Greensboro's newest mass vaccination site, according to Guilford County and state leaders.
The federally-run site at the Four Seasons Town Centre welcomed the first appointments Wednesday.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston visited the site to see the operation for himself and said it exceeded his expectations.
"I have no real idea of how it’s going to look so to speak, but I didn’t know it was going to be as massive as it was," said Alston, "You got over 300 people from all across the country that’s here in Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina in order to administer mass vaccination site for our citizens. It was great."
Keith Acree with North Carolina Emergency Management said before the site closed for the day, they were right on track to meet their goal.
"Everything was very smooth. Very few hiccups. It looks like we’re right on target to get to 3,000 by the end of the day when we close," he said.
About 1,500 appointments were allocated for the indoor portion and 1,500 were allocated for the drive-thru.
Acree said to expect those numbers for those stations to be less next week, as more doses go toward community events.
"As the community partners or the spokes of this operation come on board next week you’ll see some of those doses shift to the community partners and there will be a little less of a load right here at the drive-thru and indoor clinic," he said.
Governor Roy Cooper made an appearance to tour the site. Alston said it went smoothly with no major hiccups throughout the day.
"You've got the inside operations, you've got hundreds of people working on the inside you got hundreds of people working on the outside. Just like the governor said, it was a smooth and very professional operation."
Alston said it took no more than 30 minutes total to get people in and out of the site.
"Total, it’s no more than 25-30 minutes from getting registration to leaving," Alston said, "and the majority of the time it’s then monitoring you for that 15 minutes. They have so many sites set up that there’s no wait time basically at all."
Acree said they hope to keep the process smooth as the weeks go on.
"I think my word of guidance would be, get here about 15 minutes before your appointment," said Acree, "You don’t have to wait too long. We kept people moving through at a steady pace today we never really saw long lines build up. I would say it was a steady pace kind of all day."
The FEMA coronavirus vaccine clinic expects to put 3,000 doses in arms a day. Air Force service members and National Guardsmen are aiding in the operation.
The clinic will administer 168,000 doses over the next eight weeks.
"I was very very impressed with how they set it up and just show that this is not their first rodeo," Alston said.
Alston said he plans to find out next week if there is any way to extend the site past the eight weeks it plans to be in Greensboro.
"I am going to be asking sooner rather than later. I’m not going to wait until the seventh week. I’m going to be asking next week, 'How can we extend this?' said Alston, "We’re not going to end this in the next eight weeks. We’re still not going to have all our people vaccinated. I want to make sure we get at least 85% of all of our citizens here in Guilford County who want the vaccine vaccinating by the end of July so that way we can have her community and get back to some normalcy by the first part of August."
Alston said if that's not possible, he hopes daily vaccinations can ramp up to a number higher than 3,000 a day.