HE'S PLANNED HUNDREDS OF RUNS. NOW DAVE MCGILLIVRAY IS ORCHESTRATING THE RACE TO DELIVER THE COVID-19 VACCINE
BOSTON.COM | MAINLY NEWS.GR
"It is very similar to managing a road race," says the longtime Boston Marathon director.
Dave McGillivray has done a lot of things most people haven’t. His website lists an absurd collection of running achievements: 158 total marathons, 120 miles in 24 hours, even an 80-day-long journey from Medford, Ore. to Medford, Mass., all while raising millions for charity.
But his next race may be his most important yet: the race to vaccinate Bay Staters for COVID-19.
McGillivray and his event planning company, DMSE Sports, have been the architects of the Boston Marathon for decades. Suddenly left without any races to plan for in 2020, McGillivray pivoted his company toward other outdoor event planning such as outdoor graduations and drive-in movies.
When Cambridge-based CIC Health began preparations to launch mass vaccination sites at Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park, the company turned to McGillivray and DMSE Sports to help set up the locations. The Gillette and Fenway sites are now both up and running, and Boston.com spoke to McGillivray by phone about his experiences with the pandemic, and the vaccination rollout.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Boston.com: Can you explain how DMSE Sports got involved with vaccine distribution?
Dave McGillivray: A local provider, CIC Health here in Cambridge, ironically reached out to us, right around Christmas time. They said, “Hey, we’ve been retained by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be a local provider for some mass vaccine sites, and we need some logistical people to work with us.” I was like, “When do we start?”
One of the sites was Gillette stadium and another was Fenway Park. We set up Gillette Stadium a couple of weeks ago and we’re working there five, six, seven days a week since, ten-hour days. The hope is that we’ll be able to eventually, at Gillette, vaccinate 5,000 or more people per day, and who knows how much more it may expand. Right now it’s inside the building, maybe when the weather gets better there may be some consideration for drive-through options too …
Our responsibility is moving and controlling people flow and handling the logistics of the vaccination site. Initially, we had to help conceptualize how this would all work, and then we’re constantly tinkering with it and improving it. The most important thing, other than keeping everyone safe, is efficiency, because the idea is to get as many people through it in a day as we can. We’ve brought out some medical people to help us with all the medical supplies, the ordering and replenishment of the supplies, and so forth.
It’s been quite an education, quite a learning experience, but it is very similar to managing a road race. It’s registering people, it’s having them show up, it’s lining them up, it’s getting them through the course in a safe and efficient manner, making sure they’re okay before they leave, and checking them out. That’s what our role is with the vaccination site. It’s been working extremely well.
For us, here’s this thing that brought us to our knees, and now it’s given us an opportunity to do good. Almost like the 2013 bombings at Boston, good overcomes evil. We came back in 2014, that year was epic because we were resilient, we persevered, and we were not going to be denied our running freedom. I look at that almost similar in nature to this. This pandemic might have brought us to our knees, but it didn’t totally wipe us out and we’re getting back on our feet. We’re gonna beat this thing, it’s just going to take some time, and we’re working towards that end. Now we’re saving lives, we’re keeping people healthy, and we’re helping to bring back our own industry. It’s a good feeling, it kind of accentuates our motto these days, which is that the comeback will always be stronger than the setback. I think that’s what we’re experiencing right now.
Do you think the opportunity to receive the vaccine in these iconic locations will help sway people unsure about the vaccine to get it?
It’s a good question. I’m not sure. Maybe there are some people who are just incredible fans or Fenway or the Red Sox or Gillette or the Patriots that this might take them off the fence if they’re on the fence. I don’t know if it will go as far as changing the mind of someone who’s dead set against it, but I do think that by virtue of the size of these facilities the hope is that we can vaccinate a lot of people. That’s number one, and number two is that we want to make it an experience too. Some people are probably nervous about getting the shot. By coming to Gillette or Fenway, maybe it distracts them to the point that being at these iconic places helps them get through the process.
How helpful is it to the community that these sites are easily accessible via public transportation?
Obviously, it’s critical, if you can’t get to them it defeats the purpose. The idea is to pick sites that are accessible. I think the intent, once we get these mass vaccination sites where we can do thousands and thousands and thousands of shots per day set up, I think the intent is to go into the communities because there are some folks in the communities that for one reason or another can’t get to these facilities. So I think the commonwealth is doing both, setting up these massive sites but also trying to infiltrate into the local communities. Access is obviously critical.
What will the timeline for these two sites look like, both on a day-to-day basis and long-term (since their resident teams will eventually need their space back)?
On a day-to-day basis, it’s going to be as many hours as we have resources to stand them up, close to 10 hours a day. We will ramp up to that, at first it was two hours, then I think it went to six, then eight and ten. It went from five days a week to now seven days a week. Ten hours a day, seven days a week is optimal. With Gillette, we probably have it at least up until the fall, that’s a good eight-, nine-month period of time. With Fenway, if the season happens, we’re going to have to make some adjustments. I know that the Red Sox want to continue to support this. When the team is away, they want to stand up the facility. They certainly want to work with us, but they obviously have to be sensitive to their own schedule.
How do the difficulties of the past year compare to the difficulties of your various athletic feats?
I think they’re very different. The athletic feats are more physical, whereas what happened in the past year is more business. But the learning is sort of the same, it’s all about not succumbing to all the hurdles and the challenges, staying the course, being patient, having that four-letter word first and foremost at the front of your mind: hope, hope that we can do this. That’s sort of the mindset we’re in right now.
Jean Knaack, the executive director of the Road Runners Club of America, has called for states to use the skills of race planners to organize vaccine distribution. Do you agree?
I would love to see some campaign waged in the U.S. where management companies, who are effectively out of business right now, engaged by the government to help them stand up the vaccination sites, because this is exactly what they do on a regular basis, manage thousands and thousands of people and do it in a safe and efficient manner. That’s what they need. I hope this catches on throughout the country because it’s a perfect fit. The timing of it is perfect because we’re helping to bring our own sport back. Until we vaccinate everyone, we’re not going to bring our sports back. The vaccination sites are going to need us as long as people still need to be vaccinated. Once that’s done, our sport comes back and we morph back into what we had been doing all along. It’s a perfect fit.
What are the biggest challenges you face in getting the vaccine out?
There’s frustration in hearing on the news that people are trying to register and they can’t since it’s full, and I get that. That’s like, when I put on a great road race, and the next year you flick the switch for registration and fill up in 10 minutes, and the people that didn’t get in are really frustrated, and I don’t blame them, that hurts. You can only fit so many people in at once. My hope is that more and more sites open up and more and more vaccines become available so that we can get as many people as possible vaccinated, that want to be vaccinated, as quickly as possible. That’s it in a nutshell.
Has anything surprised you about the rollout so far?
One cute aside that shows how the dynamics of this are so unique: given the fact that we have to be sure about the temperature that these vaccines need to be in, refrigerators that we have now have a mechanism where, every few hours, I get an email from the refrigerator telling me what the temperature is in that refrigerator. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be getting emails from a refrigerator in my life. It accentuates that there are some peculiarities and nuances to this that you never would’ve experienced elsewhere that this brings. But I understand it, it’s so critical that that temperature stays at a certain temperature or it could spoil a whole batch of vaccines, which defeats the purpose too. These things are put in place just to make sure that we’re good.
What’s a good result at the end of this? How are you measuring success?
Right now, I think the hope is to minimize the rate of infection and, of course, fatalities. We’re vaccinating in phases, starting with the people who are most vulnerable. The hope is that even though we haven’t vaccinated everyone right away, if the population that we’re vaccinating now is the most vulnerable, and we’re keeping them alive and keeping them healthy, then everyone’s doing their job.
And then we will get to everyone who wants it. And once we do that, I mean, I don’t know the science behind all of this, I’m not an epidemiologist, I’m not an infectious disease expert, but my hope is that this thing goes away and goes for good. My sense is that it won’t go away forever, and we might be needing to get a shot like the flu shot every year or once in a while, that becomes the new normal. But the main thing right now to minimize the amount of people that are getting hurt.