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Inaccurate social media posts send scores of people to Portsmouth mass vaccine clinic as walk-ins, leaving staff frustrated

Officials want to set the record straight: in order to receive a shot at a mass vaccination clinic, you must have an appointment.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Social media posts advertising appointment-free shots at the Portsmouth Sportsplex mass vaccination clinic caused a lot of issues for staff and volunteers.

Laruen Opett of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management said usually walk-ups aren’t a huge problem, until Tuesday.

“Yesterday at Portsmouth in particular, 90 percent of the folks that were there the first part of the morning did not have an appointment," Opett said. "They were walk-ups.”

Opett said scores of people showed up without an appointment, leaving those who did have appointments standing in a much longer line and getting frustrated.

“We’ve actually had people leave the line that have appointments because they either need to get to work or they didn’t realize it was going to take that long, or they physically didn’t feel like they could stand in line anymore," she said.

Virginia has four mass vaccination clinics in play: Danville, Petersburg, the newly opened clinic at Norfolk, and Portsmouth. Opett said people trying to get a shot as a walk-up isn’t unusual. 

“We’ve seen this at all of our sites," she said. "This is a perfectly normal thing that we’ve been seeing at all four, at this point.”  

But it's become a big problem.

Opett said social media posts and chain e-mails advertising walk-in vaccine shots caused most of the issues, so now her team is trying to set the record straight that appointments are mandatory to receive a shot at mass vaccination clinics.

“We received a number of phone calls trying to verify, folks trying to verify if they can come," she said. "We tried to address those rumors. We tried to get on social media, to try and find the sources of those rumors. We did make contact with some employers, with some groups yesterday to try and spread the message that there weren’t walk-ins.”

Yes, sometimes there are leftover shots, but Opett said they never go unused. Towards the end of the day, volunteers will contact people who are eligible to come in and get a vaccine.  

“We just can’t have mass amounts of people showing up. There is a plan in place to get people that are eligible, vaccinated," she said. “Each site has a list of folks that they can make contact with.”

Volunteers are talking to people in line to find out who has an appointment. If you show up without one, you will get turned away with instructions on how to register.

To register for an appointment, visit: www.vaccinate.virginia.gov.  

Volunteers at the Portsmouth clinic administer 1,000 shots per day.

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