Ratliff Stadium Holds Practice Run for COVID-19 Vaccine Drive-Thru

Before the drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine distribution at Ratliff Stadium began on January 24, 2021, the City of Odessa had a practice run just two days before.

According to NewsWest 9, Medical Center Hospital has partnered with the City of Odessa to make the drive-thru vaccination event a success so they had a test run on January 22, 2021 to work out any problems that might arise.

While going through the test run, officials administered about 50 shots to figure out how the process would go and to make sure to work out any problems and discovered the one crucial thing was pre-registration.

"Pre-registration is going to be the key to this deal. If you can get to the website, the Medical Center website, and get pre-registered, it’s going to move your process so much faster when you get here on site. We have over 11,000 people pre-registered," said Russell Tippin, President and CEO of Medical Center Hospital.

Several issues did pop up during the practice run on Friday.

"Our pinch point at the entrance was our biggest number one cause. We thought we had enough lanes. We do not. We’re gonna fix that tonight, and then at the shot area we had a glitch in our technology that we were having a hard time finding things," Tippin said.

Tippin said hey had about 3,900 vaccines that were going to be administered when the drive-thru vaccination site opened on Sunday and another 3,900 to arrive sometime this week.

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