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IU Health prepares to give first vaccinations Wednesday

Frontline long-term care and frontline health care workers will be the first to be vaccinated.

INDIANAPOLIS — IU Health's vaccination clinic at its downtown Neuroscience Center is set to open Wednesday, Dec. 16 at noon.

Frontline long-term care and frontline health care workers will be the first to be vaccinated. They began signing up Saturday to schedule their appointments.

Kristi Kelley, IU Health's nursing director of infection prevention, and her team have been preparing for weeks. Kelley said they've had hundreds of volunteers offer to take part in practice runs.  

The process involves checking in, undergoing a health screening, registering, getting vaccinated and spending 15 minutes afterward in a "monitoring station" to make sure all has gone well before the patient leaves.

Kelley said the whole process should take between 25-30 minutes from start to finish. The frontline long-term care and frontline health care workers will also make an appointment for the second dose within three weeks.

"We want to make sure we do as many as possible, so we're planning to be one of biggest, if not the biggest, [vaccination clinics] in Indiana to start," Kelley said. "We are going to push efficiency as high as we can so we can move past this pandemic."

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She said the clinic will be open 12 hours a day through Monday as they plan to vaccinate 1,900 people before getting another shipment of the vaccine.

Kelley said it's both exciting and a huge relief to see health care workers finally getting the protection they need.

"It's hard not to be overwhelmed with emotion when we see the commitment from the heroes we work with to say, 'We're really going to turn the tide on this. This is our chance, and we're going to take it,'" Kelley said.

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