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MIT Medical vaccinates more than 7000 at flu clinic

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An MIT Student getting a flu shot at MIT’s Walk-in flu clinic in Walker Memorial Oct. 24.

At least 7455 MIT community members received a flu vaccination at Tuesday’s day-long clinic run by MIT Medical, Kim Schive, communications and marketing specialist at MIT Medical wrote in an email to The Tech yesterday.

This was the number on the last sticker that were given out to participants by the end of the clinic. Schive expects the final tally to reach around 7500 after accounting for those vaccinated but not given stickers.

Tuesday’s count exceeds the previous one-day record of 5154, though it fell short of MIT Medical’s goal of 10000 vaccinations.

The flu clinic, which ran from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., was open free of charge to all MIT Medical patients (ages 10 and up), MIT retirees, and all employees, students, and affiliates, regardless of insurance coverage.

Malte Ahrens ’18 ran a live survey throughout the day, tabulating participants’ sticker number and time of vaccination. The data fitted a linear trend with r-squared value of 0.99, which predicted that 7324 people would be vaccinated by 6 p.m.