MISSOULA — One of the first public COVID-19 vaccination clinics for Missoula County was held on Sunday at the University of Montana’s Adams Center.
The Missoula County COVID-19 Vaccine Coordination Team spearheaded the clinic with help from UM’s School of Pharmacy and the Missoula Fire Department. Only 400 first-dose vaccine appointments were available and all of those slots filled up within an hour.
The clinic was only open to Missoula County residents without regular healthcare providers and recipients also had to belong to the first tier of Phase 1B. That includes Missoula County residents 70 and older, American Indians and other people of color.
Missoula County will receive 1,500 first doses of the vaccine each week for the foreseeable future and those doses will be distributed between 26 vaccine providers in the county. Vaccine coordinators hope to see our weekly shipment of vaccines grow as we go.
“We know that it has to ramp up and scale up from 400 to as many as we can safely do in a day, so this is sort of a proof of concept,” said Missoula County COVID-19 Vaccine Coordination Team spokesman Nick Holloway. “If this works then we can build off of this, but it is satisfying to see people come in and get vaccinated.”
All information regarding Missoula County’s vaccine distribution can be found here.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that the first public vaccine clinic was held at the University of Montana. Missoula County's first clinic was held at the old Lucky's Market site.