Local people interested in getting a free flu shot in Winnemucca this past Thursday began lining up before the 4 p.m. clinic start time.
They filled the four serpentine lines that wound back and forth through the parking lot of the Indoor Events Center at the fairgrounds. Then the line continued all the way out to East Winnemucca Boulevard and for a considerable distance down the Boulevard.
The longest lines formed right at the beginning but continued the entire evening. Volunteers working the clinic were not idle any time during the four hours the clinic was open. Winnemucca police helped organize the traffic line and assisted drivers who weren’t in line but just needed to get from one place to another.
Nearly 800 people took advantage of the offer for a free flu vaccination that they could receive without even getting out of their vehicles.
The vaccine for the flu shot clinic is provided to residents free of charge by the Division of Public and Behavioral Health.
Those who work to put on the drive-through clinic are all volunteers. Volunteers walked up and down the line of vehicles waiting to drive into the events center and handed out clipboards with paperwork to be filled out by drivers and their passengers before they got inside. Volunteers directed the flow of vehicles, volunteers gave instructions and volunteer nurses gave people their flu shot right through the open window of whatever vehicle they were driving.
The drive by flu shot clinic required people to arrive and go through the indoor event center in some sort of vehicle, to avoid having pedestrians mixing with the high number of vehicles winding through the line.
However, there were a couple of folks who received their flu shot on a bicycle or motorcycle.
“We did almost 800 flu vaccinations in just four hours, all with volunteers,” said Humboldt County Community Health Nurse Marsha Foreman. She added, “It shows how great our community members are to each other.”
