Wife and I had Laconia appts for end of March. Late Wednesday I got a call from the state, offering us an early Friday afternoon shot at Walgreen in Wolfeboro, indoors, so I said yes. The second shot was scheduled for early April at the same time. The guy who called actually works for the state DOT, not DHHS, and was doing calls for just Walgreen. I gather the state is using whatever resources are at hand to make calls to fill in open slots and move people up.
In and out inside a half hour, including the "paperwork," the shots, and the 15-minute hang-around afterward. The shot was Moderna. I often get a nervous reaction to any needle in the upper arm, but I was surprised. The shot went off quickly and without any real discomfort. The afternoon passed without thinking much about it, but at bedtime I did notice discomfort if I tried sleeping on that shoulder. This morning both of us have some minor soreness in the area, but it won't keep me from normal activity.
At Walgreen, I asked about how many shots they give in a day. They said about 40, but that the operation there was not as big as at other stores. On reading about today's huge effort at the speedway, hoping to administer 11,000 shots over three eight-hour days. I got to thinking about the numbers. With an assembly line style of process, with multiple volunteers passing a steady stream of people through the various steps in multiple parallel streams, things could go faster.
Suppose each shot station could pass one person through every four minutes, considering time to get the needle out and ready, sit the person down, shoot, and apply bandaid if needed. That's 15/hour, or conceivably up to maybe 100 per day, with breaks. Dividing, 11,000/3 days by 100 means there would have to be around 37 people actually giving the shots. Quadruple that for volunteers on either side of the shot, including traffic control, and you'd need at least 150 people to staff the event. The WMUR news item speaks of having 300 volunteers, so maybe they have many more than 37 actually jabbing arms, taking longer per shot, or perhaps there are many more involved in traffic control and sign-in.
The state has somewhat over a million residents age 18 and up. If the goal is to vaccinate at least 80% of these, that's 800,000. It would take 218 days or 31 weeks of "speedway class events" to do the job. Obviously the speedway event will provide just a small fraction of the required number of shots. There must be many more of those, and still most of the shots will be given cumulatively by all the original 13 state sites and now many pharmacies and big-box stores. And NH is a fairly small state. Run your own numbers for a state like NY or CA.
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