Five days before the vaccination center opens, everything looks the same at the airfield. Apart from the transporter from the event supplier “SchenkSpass” from Eibelstadt, there is nothing in front of the blue Hangar 3 to indicate what could happen inside. The words “Mission Ready” from the old days of the US hangar couldn’t have gone better. The vaccination center mission has started.
Always right in the middle: Michael Drse, administrative director of the vaccination center and the medical director Dr. Christoph Zander. As the head of district development, Drse is actually responsible for topics such as culture and homeland maintenance or sustainability. Since November he has had an additional task: to organize the construction of the vaccination center.
His medical counterpart, Dr. Christoph Zander, was actually already retired. The former chief physician of general and visceral surgery at the Ochsenfurt Main Clinic has resumed work for the vaccination center. He will coordinate the doctors in the vaccination centers.
Together with District Administrator Thomas Eberth, stand builder Christian Schenk, the BRK district association Wrzburg and the regional association of Johanniter, they set up within a few days.
Five days before the start: construction work is in full swing
In the entrance area of the hangar, golden stands with red cords, which are otherwise only known from award ceremonies, lead into the main room. Only the red carpet is missing. Here it is already clear: This vaccination will be something special, it will make history.
In the approximately 25,000 square meter hall there are three large festival tents surrounded by four small pagodas. What looks like a small folk festival will be the vaccination station for the southern part of the district.
Five days before the start, construction work is still in full swing. Thick black cables lie on the floor, construction lights provide light. Power and LAN cables still have to be laid, and the mobile heaters still have to work.
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In the middle there is a 30 meter long white marquee. The heart of the vaccination center. Through the marquee tarpaulin with windows, you can see red and white chairs, which are left and right with a minimum distance from each other in front of two flat-screen TVs. The video education will take place here later. In the rear area is vaccinated.
Within a day all the tents were up
For the SchenkSpass team, this is routine: “Setting up is our day-to-day business. We had the tents, lighting, electronics and event technology in stock. We also have a metalworker with us if we still have to adapt something. We can respond to spontaneous changes react “, says owner Christian Schenk. Usually his team equips company events or music festivals, like the Taubertal or Umsonst & Draussen. His team will work through this weekend, because after the weekend the tents and interior fittings have to be in place.
“The construction is our daily business”
Christian Schenk, owner of the Eibstadt event equipment company SchenkSpass–
The vaccination center also presents the experienced event outfitter with new challenges: “We have to take special safety requirements and hygiene conditions into account. The tents have to be barrier-free and all surfaces and walls disinfectable. That is why we couldn’t use our wooden exhibition walls at all. We now only build partitions made of plastic and aluminum, “says Schenk.
At the entrance to the hall, the technicians set up a 20 meter wide tent. That will be the check-in and waiting area later. In the middle is a white plastic counter. District administrator Thomas Eberth, Michael Drse, Christoph Zander and Christian Schenk stand around it.
District administrator is impressed by the rapid construction
The district administrator is visiting the construction work for the first time and is surprised: “In mid-November I was still skeptical whether we could keep to December 15th, but when you see how fast everything is going now, I am convinced that we will be finished on time. “
While they talk under the scaffolding about signs, power lines and barriers, the tent construction continues around them. Behind them stand technicians pulling ropes to stretch the plastic tarpaulin over the scaffolding. One of them sets the pace: “Hepp and hepp and hepp. Stop, pull a little slower and further. Hepp and hepp and hepp”. The construction of the vaccination center is teamwork.
Shortly before the opening, crucial details still need to be clarified
Three days later the hangar is no longer an empty hall. Partition walls turn the once empty tent into a small clinic with a check-in counter, waiting room and separate cabins. The cables are twisted and hot air hoses blow warm air into the interior of the tents. It’s noticeably warmer in the hangar than it was three days ago.
On this day, the vaccination center will be inspected by those who will be working here for the next six months. The Bavarian Red Cross and the Johanniter. In addition to the doctors, they provide the administrative staff for check-in and check-out as well as the medical staff who carry out the vaccinations.
“There’s another wall or a curtain coming in here, right?” Asks a Johanniter employee, pointing to the narrow partition between two cabins? “Yes, so that the doctor can switch from one cubicle to the next,” says Michael Drse. Unlike in a normal clinic, four vaccinees are always going through the vaccination process at the same time. “The processes have to be right and everything has to be signposted as simply as possible so that it doesn’t jam,” he says.
Meanwhile, Stefan Dietz from the BRK examines the refrigerated container in which the vaccine is stored. “We can use a trolley to bring the vaccine to the vaccination booths, but the cables have to be moved differently,” he says. The vaccination has to go “just in time”, as he says. “Once the vaccine is drawn up, it can no longer be transported.”
Only the vaccine is still missing
With the official opening on Wednesday, however, the preparations are not over. Medical equipment such as syringes, bandages or medication is still missing. But everyone is waiting much more urgently for the software, for which the entire staff has yet to be trained. With it, the appointments are coordinated and every vaccination process is documented: Without an appointment, no vaccination and without documentation, no re-vaccination. Because if you want to be immune to the Covid 19 pathogen, you have to go to the vaccination center a second time after four weeks, otherwise everything is free.
Medical material and software come from the Free State, both are a long time coming.
At full capacity, around 2000 people could be vaccinated in the vaccination centers and with the mobile teams. In order to do justice to this, Johanniter and BRK hire additional staff and do so as quickly as possible, because the staff must be trained in a few days. “In the last few days we have had job interviews every 15 minutes, just like we did with speed dating,” says Stefan Dietz from the BRK district association in Wrzburg.
“At the moment I see the mayor and the district administrator more often than my wife.”
Uwe Kinstle, Lower Franconia regional association of the Johanniter–
Meetings, and smartphones ringing repeatedly. The construction of the vaccination center is an exceptional situation that demands all those involved: “This is a logistical masterpiece. We all pull together here and work closely together, almost like a family,” says Uwe Kinstle from the regional association of Johanniter. But there is not much free time left: “We have been working at the limit for nine months. At the moment I see the mayor and the district administrator more often than my wife.”
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