Student Health Services is continuing to offer COVID-19 vaccine booster clinics for students, staff and community members at the MAT into the end of the semester. Thus far, Colgate has offered eight booster shot clinics that have administered a total of roughly 1000 doses of the Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J vaccines, according to Director of Student Health Services Dr. Merrill Miller.

Students, including student EMTs and work-study employees, are involved in running the clinics.

“Our student EMTs and other student clinic volunteers are amazing. They are skilled and they are efficient and they are kind. We absolutely could not run these clinics without them,” Miller said.

According to a Nov. 29 email from Vice President for Communications Laura Jack, 40 people missed their appointments for clinics held prior to Thanksgiving recess, leading to doses being thrown away. However, Miller said the trend has since mitigated.

“During the early clinics we had quite a few no-shows, but since Vice President Jack wrote about it in the weekly Digest, the no-show rate has declined,” Miller said. “We have had to discard some doses — because they have to be used within a certain number of hours once they have been thawed and the vial punctured — but we’ve been able to keep the number quite low because we call people on the wait-list at the end of each clinic to see if they can come in on short notice.”

Future clinics will be demand-based, so students are encouraged to sign up for a waitlist spot if unable to secure an appointment for this week’s clinic, according to a school-wide email from Dr. Miller on Monday, Dec. 6. Students can reach out to Student Health Services for more information.