The COVID-19 vaccine clinic didn’t officially open until 10 a.m. on April 14, but by soon after 8 o’clock, hopeful people began lining up along Sacred Heart Way in Northwest Washington.
By 9:15 a.m., there were about 35 people in line. Some had appointments to get a vaccine that morning. Others showed up with nothing more than hopes that there might be a chance to get the first precious dose of protection against the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed everyone’s lives for the last year.
The first of four clinics scheduled by the D.C. government at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in April drew largely from the Mount Pleasant/Adams Morgan community. The staff at Sacred Heart had been making appointments for the 200 slots the Health Department made available.
Volunteers collect information from Maria Rivas as she waits in a line to get her COVID-19 vaccination on April 14 at the clinic set up at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)
Monica Zevallos, whose normal job is director of the RCIA and evangelization program at Sacred Heart, was part of the team coordinating with the D.C. Department of Health, the District’s Office of Religious Affairs and Five Medicine, a telehealth company contracted with the city to set up and staff the mobile vaccine clinics. After she got her vaccine, she was heading into the office to help make appointments for the next clinics.
“The phone has been ringing off the hook,” she said. While non-parishioners were also being registered, “our main concern as a parish is to vaccinate people from this community,” she said, gesturing to the Mount Pleasant area. “People feel safe coming here. They know it will be a friendly, Spanish-speaking environment.”
Zevallos said having the option of calling the parish to make an appointment overcame hurdles such as a requirement for an email address to use the city’s registration system. “Not everyone has an email address,” she explained by way of example. “So we use one of ours.”
The Shrine of the Sacred Heart hosted a COVID-19 vaccination clinic on April 14 for people in the surrounding Mount Pleasant and Adams Morgan communities. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)
A handful of priests and religious from Sacred Heart and other churches were invited to get their shots. Some people not connected to Sacred Heart made appointments through a website administered by the D.C. government. Dozens more lined up without appointments or came after friends called to tell them about the clinic. In all, DC Health reported vaccinating 420 people at Sacred Heart that day.
At the front of the line, Nelson Ayala and Mariela Vado, partners at an accounting firm a few blocks away on 14th Street, sipped coffee and chatted while they waited. Ayala heard about the clinic because he’s a parishioner at Sacred Heart. “I gave up” on getting an appointment through the online registration system run by the city, he said.
Traveling to El Salvador to see his family is at the top of his priority list for what his vaccinated status will enable him to do, he said. Vado, whose family is in Nicaragua, said she also plans to travel soon. Vaccination programs in those countries are far behind the United States, with both only beginning to have vaccines available in March.
Monica Zevallos, a staff member at Sacred Heart, receives her COVID-19 vaccination at the April 14 clinic there, and then went back to her office to help people make appointments for the next clinics hosted by the parish. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)
Julita Diaz, a member of the parish, got in line at 8:15 for her 10 a.m. appointment. She’d said she’d tried to get an appointment elsewhere but the Sacred Heart option was the first one that worked.
“When I’m vaccinated I can go back to work,” she said, explaining that she has been unemployed for the last year, out of her job as a housekeeper at Reagan National Airport. COVID had hit her family hard, she said, with several people who got sick and one death. Her employer has not offered a path to get vaccinated.
Nearby in line, Jorge Quinde and Melida Torres explained that even when they’re vaccinated, they expect to still have to be especially cautious, wearing masks, and keeping their distance from people, because their 17-year-old child has leukemia, vastly increasing the danger of infection.
Capuchin Father Carlos Reyes, a parochial vicar at Sacred Heart, receives his COVID-19 vaccination during the April 14 clinic there. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)
Sacred Heart’s pastor, Capuchin Franciscan Father Emilio Biosca Aguero, told the Catholic Standard that the parish was contacted by the Mayor’s Office of Religious Affairs to propose a clinic at the church as part of the “Faith in the Vaccine” initiative, partnering with churches. Parishioners at Sacred Heart are predominantly Latino, with many immigrants, some who do not have legal immigration status. That increases anxiety about going through the government to get a vaccine, he explained. Hispanics are more likely to contract COVID-19 than whites, are four times more likely to be hospitalized from it and nearly three times more likely to die from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A DC Health staffer explained that “Faith in the Vaccine” was initially a pilot project to make it easier for residents over age 65 in Wards 5, 7 and 8 to get vaccinated at churches. The wards have high rates of mortality from COVID-19. As the District’s vaccine eligibility criteria changed, so did the eligibility criteria for the initiative, which led to expanding to Sacred Heart, which is in Ward 1, and other churches.
Plans at Sacred Heart grew to four scheduled vaccine clinics there on April 14, 17, 22 and 24. St. Luke’s Catholic Church on 4925 East Capitol Street, S.E., which is in Ward 7, will host clinics at its parking lot on April 28 and 29 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. And Emory United Methodist Church at 6100 Georgia Avenue, N.W., in Ward 4, will host clinics on April 30 and May 1.
Nelson Ayala and Mariela Vado, partners at an accounting firm near the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, were among the people receiving COVID-19 vaccinations there on April 14. (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)
This day, Sacred Heart Way, a one-block street along a small park separating the church from 16th Street Northwest, was closed to traffic, as tents were set up on the sidewalk and alongside the church.
While there had been a little confusion at first when dozens of people without appointments appeared outside the church, by an hour into the first clinic, the system was humming along. Volunteers recruited from the parish and by the D.C. government worked the lines with the necessary paperwork, making sure everyone was registered. Volunteers were able to get the vaccine, too.
Ligia Rodriguez was one of those without an appointment. An employee of the D.C. Public Works Department, Rodriguez happened across the closed Sacred Heart Way as she drove a dump truck to pick up a load of sand. She parked and persistently asked volunteers and staff people to figure out how she, too, could get vaccinated. Fortunately, she was allowed a couple of hours from her work day for the purpose of getting a vaccine, she said.
As she paced the sidewalk, anxious to get a turn, she said she would travel to El Salvador this summer to see her family, once she was fully vaccinated. A short time later, her arm had been jabbed and her follow-up appointment was scheduled. Even behind a mask, her face showed her relief.
“It was easier for me to cross the border with no shoes on than to get a vaccine,” she joked, her eyes crinkling with a smile.
Ligia Rodriguez gets her temperature checked before receiving her COVID-19 vaccination at the clinic set up at Sacred Heart, and afterward signs up for her follow-up vaccination. (CS photos/Andrew Biraj)
Once people were checked in at a registration tent, they waited in the church hall or near the tent on the sidewalk for their turn at one of the four vaccination stations staffed by Five Medicine. There, they bared an arm, got a shot and were sent to wait in the hall for 15 minutes in case of an allergic reaction. Appointments were made for second doses of the Moderna vaccine for each person, back at the church a month later.
(The neighborhood vaccination clinics in the District of Columbia are being organized for people in those communities, and it is recommended that people contact the hosting churches and register in advance for the vaccinations. The phone number for the Shrine of the Sacred Heart is 202-234-8000 and the phone number for St. Luke Parish is 202-584-8322.)
