CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Several Hampton Roads cities are holding COVID-19 mass vaccination clinics to give shots to as many people as possible, but the second-largest city in the Commonwealth is not holding a mass clinic at this time.
“I’m getting it both because I’m a frontline worker and I also have some challenges with my immune system,” explained Victoria Irving.
Irving is from Chesapeake. She said she signed up to receive a vaccine. While she waits her turn in line, Irving wants to know why her city isn’t holding any mass vaccination clinics like Virginia Beach.
“There is a question as to why two neighboring cities with kind of the same access to resources are operating in such different ways,” Irving remarked.
Chesapeake Health Department Director Dr. Nancy Welch said each health district does things a little differently. Each city also receives different allotments of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Welch said they aren’t holding large vaccination clinics right now because she said the city doesn’t receive enough vaccines.
“We are prepared to do large mass clinics, but we want to be able to do a couple thousand a day so that means that we need to have several thousand vaccines," Welch explained.
Dr. Welch said the state gives Chesapeake roughly 2,800 doses a week. She said the low number of doses is not enough to hold a big clinic.
“We allocate at least 50% to our partners, pharmacies and private physicians and the hospital who is working on also vaccinating, helping us with some of the one B," Welch said.
Welch says Chesapeake could hold a mass vaccination clinic once the state provides more vaccine doses in the future.