PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. — Saturday, the City of Seattle hosted a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Rainier Beach to help healthcare workers. On Sunday, Amazon is jumping in to help in Seattle.
They join Pierce County, which just announced two for next week.
Pierce County officials said they're planning clinics even before they have the doses. If they find out the doses will come in, they will announce them publicly.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan joined other mayors and asked President Joe Biden to send them doses of the vaccine directly.
“We know vaccinations are our hope. That's what's going to get us back together [and] as a city we'll be able to reopen," Durkan said.
The city has trained firefighters to help with vaccinations and coordinated a clinic for caregivers.
Brittany Williams is a home care provider and said she was grateful to protect her clients and her family.
“We don't want to be guilty of signing someone else's death certificate because we're COVID-positive and asymptomatic and didn't know," Williams said.
With groups in phases 1A and 1B both approved for doses, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people ready to get vaccinated, just more supply issues.
“Eventually, the City of Seattle would like to do a thousand doses a day but we need more doses,” Durkan said.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has two drive-up clinics scheduled for next week.
“We're very much restricted by an adequate supply of vaccine so once we were confirmed that we had the vaccine coming to pierce county yesterday we pressed the button on the plans that we had in place,” said Nigel Turner, director of communicable disease at Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
One clinic is planned for Tuesday at the Clover Park Technical College. Another for Thursday at the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup.
Appointments are required. By Saturday the roughly 3,000 spots had been taken.
“There's a lot of demand for vaccine in pierce county and I think it's important to understand this is the start of it as vaccine comes available we're going to make sure there's opportunity to access it,” he said.