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'We hit it out of the park': Nearly 10,000 vaccinated at UCHealth clinic

Dr. Richard Zane with UCHealth said his team set a goal and hit it, creating a playbook for future mass vaccination sites.

DENVER — Shots that went into nearly 10,000 arms over the weekend in a parking lot outside Coors Field will save lives, UCHealth said Sunday.

Dr. Richard Zane, chief innovation officer and chief of emergency medicine for UCHealth, delivered his postgame analysis after the state's largest mass vaccination clinic closed down for the weekend.

“First and foremost, we were able to vaccinate almost 10,000 over the course of two, six-hour days," Zane said. “The time in which we vaccinated them, we hit it out of the park.”

The drive-through clinic at Coors Field was open by appointment only to people 70 and older along with some remaining health-care workers. UCHealth vaccinated 1,000 Coloradans during a test run at the same site a week prior.

RELATED: 1,000 inoculated at Colorado's first mass COVID-19 vaccine drive-through

On Sunday, Zane highlighted some of the stats collected over the weekend. 

“From entering the parking lot to exiting the parking lot, which includes 15 minutes of observation, it took 22.4 minutes for each person to be vaccinated," he said.

Less than 1% of people who scheduled appointments didn't show up for their shots, Zane said. The team administering doses of the vaccine used up the entire supply both days.

"Zero wasted doses each day," Zane said.

The playbook UCHealth and its partners created over the weekend could help future mass vaccination sites, Zane said.

"All of our lessons learned, all of [the] timestamps, whatever they want, we will help them and give them this open book," he said.

Zane said the one oversight was not planning for people who arrived two or three hours ahead of their scheduled appointments.

"Hopefully, in two weeks and in three weeks when we give the second doses to the people who came [this weekend] and last week, there is no need to come early,” he said.

The number of doses dolled out was limited only by the supply of the COVID-19 vaccine and hours of daylight, Zane said.

“We could easily, easily do 10,000 patients in one single day," he said. “Once we have more vaccine and a single-dose vaccine, we can look COVID in the rearview.”

People who received the vaccine at the clinic this weekend and last week will come back to the same site for their second shots. UCHealth is hopeful the second round will go as smoothly as the first.

“We could not have been happier with how this weekend went," Zane said.

RELATED: Connecting Colorado: Gov. Polis, other experts will answer your vaccine questions in 9NEWS town hall

RELATED: CDPHE: Coloradans 70 and older will remain priority for vaccines as next phase prep begins

RELATED: Educators and people 65+ eligible for COVID-19 vaccines on Feb. 8

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