Wake County, expecting 28,000 vaccines this week, opens 4th mass clinic

The clinic at the Human Services Center at 5809 Departure Drive opened as Wake County Public Health is expecting to receive 28,000 doses of the vaccine this week, considerably more than the 13,000 doses received on March 29 and the 11,000 doses received on March 22.

Organizers said 200 people already have appointments at the location, which will operate five days a week. The average wait time for a vaccine is about 30 minutes, officials said.

"I think we have always wanted to increase the number of vaccine sites across the county from a public health standpoint," said the vaccine lead at Wake County Divison of Public Health. "We know there will be barriers to vaccine sites -- we've known that for a long time, but one of them may be the distance they need to travel to get vaccines."

Groups 1-4 are eligible to receive vaccines Monday. On Wednesday, vaccines will be available to Group 5, all adults 16 and older.

People are only allowed to make an appointment seven days in advance because the amount of doses varies every week.

"That helps with reducing the number of no-shows. We also factor in no-shows when we provide the number of appointments, so we do schedule sometimes a little bit above knowing there will be individuals who don't show up," said Jury.

Jury said the county is excited to add a fourth mass vaccination clinic. More importantly, this marks the beginning of their transition to operating a focused regional vaccination model, where they can increase the number of vaccine centers in communities throughout Wake County.

Right now, the average number of daily new COVID-19 cases in North Carolina sits around 1,800.