Virginia Beach will have vaccinated 9,000 people during first week of Phase 1b at the Convention Center clinic

The Virginia Beach Convention Center sat nearly empty due to the pandemic for almost one year.

But now, it is ground zero for the city’s massive COVID-19 vaccination effort, which will soon amount to 9,000 city residents getting vaccinated this week.

Rooms typically used for banquets and conferences have rows of vaccination stations and chairs spaced out for vaccine recipients. The lobby has become an impromptu pharmacy where city workers and volunteers filled syringes with the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday.

Hundreds of masked people were spaced 6 feet apart in the lobby Monday and Wednesday — the clinic is open a few days each week — waiting to receive the vaccine. The next clinic will open at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Muhammad Blilal Khan, 24, an IT worker for the city’s Health and Human Services Department, sat in a large ballroom Wednesday afternoon to get his vaccine, surrounded by dozens doing the same. He said he was grateful to receive it. He contracted and recovered from COVID-19 a few weeks ago but wanted to get the vaccine to protect himself from getting it again.

“It’s for everyone’s safety to get a vaccine,” he said.

The city doesn’t have enough vaccine doses to operate daily. But on the days the clinic is open, the city aims to vaccinate 3,000 people through scheduled appointments. That’s about 300 an hour.

Since the city started vaccinating residents late last month, it has held eight clinics and vaccinated more than 11,000, said EMS Chief Ed Brazle. The city would hold more if it could get more doses.

The distribution operation began as a drive-thru clinic at an EMS station in early January and quickly moved to the Convention Center so many more people could be vaccinated simultaneously at 35 to 40 spaced tables.

Brazle said the vaccination efforts are more streamlined and efficient indoors and the city could vaccinate more than 3,000 people in one day if more supply becomes available.

“No one in the region is doing 3,000 in one day at a single location,” Brazle said. “As fast as we can get them, we are putting them in people’s arms.”

The city moved into Phase 1b of the vaccine rollout Monday. City Manager Patrick Duhaney said it will take two months to complete as long as there are enough doses. About 127,000 people — including residents over the age of 65, essential government workers, teachers, police officers, and childcare workers — in Virginia Beach are eligible to be vaccinated first during the current phase, Duhaney said.

Duhaney told the City Council on Tuesday that he anticipates the second stage of Phase 1b, including people 64 or younger with health risks, will begin in one month.

By the end of Saturday, Virginia Beach will have administered 9,000 first doses and 240 second doses of vaccines in one week, Brazle said.

Next week, Virginia Beach expects to receive 5,225 first dose vaccines and 1,000 second doses, said Bob Engle, emergency coordinator for the Virginia Health Department.

To operate the facility, nearly 200 staff and volunteers are needed every eight hours. Duhaney said relying on volunteers is not sustainable, so city staff will be temporarily reassigned to support the vaccination clinic.

Even so, Brazle said the city’s efforts alone won’t be enough. The end goal is to have vaccines be distributed through traditional pathways such as doctor’s offices and pharmacies, Brazle said.

“As more vaccines arrive, we can really spread it out on a much bigger scale,” Brazle said.

On Monday, the clinic’s first day of Phase 1b, a few issues arose. A few staff members were unable to access the state’s vaccination database needed to administer inoculations, Engle said, which slowed the process.

At the end of the day, staff realized an extra vial of Moderna had been thawed and needed to be used so it wouldn’t be wasted, Brazle said.

Engle said most of the staff began making calls to eligible vaccine recipients to come to the Convention Center immediately. None of the vaccine doses was thrown out, but too many people were contacted, so an unidentified number of people were turned away, Engle said, adding that wouldn’t happen again.

“It got out of control,” Engle said. “Now we have a list of people that are prioritized.”

Additionally, the lines have been long. Brazle said many people are showing up early for appointments, which has contributed to longer wait times. Some have waited more than two hours, he said. On Monday, those waiting stood in the rain. Now the clinic is allowing people to stand inside and staff are reminding them to distance at least 6 feet.

“A lot of people are coming early and that clogs things up,” Brazle said. “If you have an appointment you are going to get a vaccine. We are not going to run out.”

On top of that, the city’s 311 information line is fielding more calls than ever, Duhaney said. Usually, the call center receives 400 calls per day. On Monday, it answered 4,000, many from people with questions about the vaccination sign-up process, Duhaney said. He said the call center is helping older residents who do not have a computer or email to sign up for the vaccine.

Virginia Beach residents eligible for Phase 1b can register online at https://vb311.virginiabeach.gov/assist/servicetypes. More than 40,000 people had signed up by Tuesday, Duhaney said.

Alissa Skelton, 757-995-9043, alissa.skelton@pilotonline.com.