State health officials said the goal is to get COVID-19 vaccines in people's arms and that’s exactly what happened for two Nashville Subway employees who worked near a distribution site.
Metro Health Department has been working with HCA to administer the vaccines to first responders.
Last week, at the end of a shift, Metro healthcare workers realized they had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine left.
“Our nurse talked to the HCA folks and said can you get two more people to come in because we don’t have any more first responders but we have two doses left,” Brian Todd, spokesperson for Metro Nashville Health Department, said. “The HCA nurses went, they brought in two individuals who gladly said he really wanted to vaccine.”
According to Metro Health officials, the vaccine has a 6-hour window to be administered and each vial contains six doses, leaving two left for the Subway employees.
Healthcare officials continue to say that wasting vaccine is not an option.
“These were people were that were available,” Todd said. “They were the frontline workers if you will. They are essential workers … As they have been restaurant workers have been all along.”
"The most important is ... that vaccine did not go into a waste," Todd also said. “It went into an arm."
Metro Health officials said they are launching a waiting list to allow people to sign up for leftover vaccines.
“We’re working toward kind of a standby list. So, if we are getting close to the end of the day, let’s say we are 30 or 45 minutes to the end of the day,” Todd said. “People can be on a waitlist and we would call them and say…You’ve got 30 minutes to come here.”
Metro Health officials said they plan to launch this waiting list as early as next week.
