ATLANTA — Walk-up vaccinations at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta are becoming more popular, with nearly 30 percent of the people getting the shot without an appointment.
The whole point of the walk-up vaccination clinic was to take down barriers for people who want the shot. People at the stadium said it is working.
"We wanted to really time it, to see when we had a decrease in people registering. Once we started seeing that, we saw it last week, Sunday, Monday we opened it up to the community," said Matthew Kallmyer, Director of Emergency Management for Fulton County. "We did a huge push on Tuesday, and it's just been incredible since then."
He thinks opening the mass vaccination site to walk-up appointments reaches a whole new group of people.
"I think it's a different interest. We are going to keep seeing changes as we go along with this. The folks that were really hungry to get that vaccine initially took all those appointments," he said.
"Now we are seeing the next segment, who are like, ' just want to be a spontaneous consumer,'" he said.
He thinks the stadium makes that easy for people. There are two MARTA lines, bus lines, and rideshare options to get people there. There's no technology involved and people can be in and out in under 45 minutes.
They've vaccinated 7,000 walk-up patients last week - 1,900 on Sunday alone. They hope to beat those numbers this week.
"There's a portion of the population who wanted it to calm down a little bit, some people aren't tech savvy, others it was easier for their job to get a few hours off in the middle of the day," he said.
They'll have walk up appointments available until 9:30 p.m. and start back up Thursday at 9:30 in the morning.