BANGOR, Maine — Northern Light Health’s COVID-19 community vaccination site at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor has now been toured by state officials twice to study the efficiency of the operation—first by Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shah two weeks ago and again last weekend by Shah and Gov. Janet Mills.
Shah said during his visit Saturday that he specifically came back to study and learn more about the pharmacy side of the operation for other facilities.
At a virtual press briefing Wednesday, Dr. James Jarvis, physician leader for incident command at Northern Light Health and clinical education director at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, talked about recently opening a new area at the Cross Center that should help them vaccinate up to 5,000 patients a day.
"There have been several times over the past week where we have approached that 440 patients being vaccinated in an hour. And that's what we would do to reach that 5,000 mark," Jarvis said. "It is quite common for us to be vaccinating over 200 people an hour in the facility right now as things stand. And that puts us at about that 2,000 to 3,000 per day mark. And like I said, we have reached 400 an hour. So we know we can hit that 5,000 mark if we had to."
Jarvis says the only thing holding them back from hitting that number is having enough of the vaccine to do so.