TOMS RIVER, NJ – The hardest thing about getting a vaccine at the Ocean County Health Department’s vaccination site inside the gym at Toms River High School North is actually getting an appointment to get a vaccine. The facility can accommodate far more people than it currently processes each day.
The entire operation is run as efficiently and as smoothly as you can expect from a government agency. It is set up similarly to the Motor Vehicle inspection stations.
As you enter the school’s gymnasium, you are greeted first with a check to make sure you have all of your proper paperwork.
If you don’t have your paperwork, you’re sent to a line where you can fill it out. If you have your paperwork, you can bypass the line of ill-prepared. If you need to finish filling out something along the way, there’s plenty of stations in the main hallway leading to the gym, equipped with pens and hand sanitizer to get it done.
Once inside the gym, it’s reminiscent of a DMV operation, except more organized and less stressful. There are about a dozen lines, each line with two or more people giving vaccines at the front of the line.
You basically wait in the queue until it’s your turn, typically 5 to 10 minutes and before you know it, you’re sitting down getting a vaccines.
The staff requires you to wait 15 minutes and you can sit in a folding chair or on the bleachers, socially distanced.
That’s all there is to it. There should be no fear of long waits, confusion or anything else. It’s a rather simple process and the only thing holding Ocean County back from vaccinating more people is Phil Murphy and the Biden administration not having enough vaccines and redistributing vaccines elsewhere from Ocean County.
