Photos: Mass COVID-19 vaccination gets a dry run in a parking lot

A COVID-19 vaccine may be months from reaching millions of Americans. Getting all those shots into arms will be a monumental task. Shreveport, Louisiana, is getting ready now.

The city recently completed a test run, one of about a dozen across the state. Health officials there organized the community's first-ever drive-thu flu shot clinic in the massive parking lot of the Louisiana state fairgrounds.

Drivers rolled down their windows and rolled up their sleeves as they pulled up to tents for the largest vaccination event the regional health department has ever hosted. Cheerful and fast-working nurses jabbed them with vaccines.

Within about five minutes, people were on their way, exiting the parking lot while passing a row of food stands selling corn dogs, roasted nuts and lemonade.

In the near future, that's just the way officials hope it will go for a COVID-19 vaccine. A poor state that's seen its share of hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, Louisiana is trying to get out front of the challenge.

The state's health department decided early on to run test clinics in each of its nine public-health regions, using this winter's flu shot as practice to eventually distribute millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

"Unlike with testing, we have the luxury to have four to five months to plan," said Frank Welch, a doctor who is Louisiana's immunization director. Still, the pressure is on. The worst pandemic to ravage the country in a century is raging out of control and hospitals are filling up across the country as winter approaches.

Fortunately, formulas from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE as well as Moderna Inc. have displayed stunning efficacy in early test results, with initial shipments perhaps just weeks away.

Louisiana has an ambitious plan to vaccinate its nearly 5 million residents. The first doses will be limited, most likely, to a few health-care workers. Louisiana has a high number of infections and deaths as a percent of its population. About 212,000 people have fallen ill with the novel coronavirus and more than 6,200 have died.

The fairgrounds flu-vaccine clinic help show what the state is up against. Cars trickle in more slowly than regional public health director Martha Whyte would like. The day started with a supply of 1,500 shots but only 400 people showed up to get their flu vaccine. Whyte, who is a doctor, still deems the day a success. "I just wish we had more people," she said.

Perhaps, she speculated, most people already received their flu shots: It's November and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged people to get vaccinated before the end of October.

Ensuring vaccines are distributed equitably is a priority of the state's COVID-19 vaccination campaign.