GUELPH -- The SkyJack mass vaccination clinic on Woodlawn Road in Guelph closed its doors Wednesday, exactly five months after it opened.
The clinic opened in March and was set up in an open space meant for customer visits that wasn't being used during the pandemic.
"In particular it had facilities like the kitchen area which was good for the preparation of the vaccines and really the sort of space and reception areas where we could develop a flow, a one-way flow, that was particularly easy," said Malcolm Early, SkyJack's vice president of marketing.
At the height of the effort, about 1,400 people received a shot at the clinic each day.
In total, 57,024 vaccine doses were administered at the scissor lift plant.
"From a manufacturing point of view that sort of focus on efficiency and focus on process sort of helped us out here," Early said.
For many who got the jab at the clinic, the process was quick and easy.
"They just whipped you right through, it was unbelievable," said Sheldon Taylor, one of the final people to get a shot at the clinic on Wednesday. "From the parking lot to getting the needle it couldn't have been more than four minutes."
About 600 volunteers worked at the SkyJack clinic, some of whom left messages on the wall ahead of the closing to explain why they wanted to be involved.
"It's pretty exciting to say that we have gotten to a point where we no longer need these mass clinics to be able to vaccinate," said Rita Isley, director of community health for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health.
With nearly 75 per cent of residents in Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph now fully vaccinated, public health is shifting its strategy.
"We know where our vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are in our communities so we're going to be going out to some of the smaller, remote, more rural areas to sort of make the vaccine easy for them to access," Isley said.
