Final day of COVID-19 vaccinations at Richmond Raceway is May 27

Thursday is the final day of COVID-19 vaccinations at Richmond Raceway, where officials have administered more than 160,000 shots during the past four months.

Henrico County is shutting down the site after Thursday’s walk-up event concludes at 6 p.m. The final session will offer the Pfizer vaccine to anyone 12 or older who attends. Attendees should enter at Gate 7 of the raceway, 600 East Laburnum Avenue.

In total, Henrico residents now have received a total of more than 306,000 doses of vaccine; more than 176,000 have received at least one dose, and nearly 142,000 (nearly 43% of all county residents) are fully vaccinated.

Having offered vaccinations to everyone on the pre-registration list several weeks ago and having held a number of walk-up events since then, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts are continuing to shift their strategy away from mass vaccination events and into smaller community-based efforts. Those efforts, health officials hope, will allow them to simplify the process for people who want to be vaccinated but who weren’t able to pre-register, didn’t want to pre-register or simply couldn’t find the time to make it to a mass vaccination event.

The growing vaccination numbers have slowed the incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Henrico to a mere trickle; the county is averaging only 12 new confirmed cases per day during the most recent seven-day period – its lowest rate since the pandemic began 14 months ago.

Positivity percentages among those who have been tested for COVID in Henrico during the most recent seven-day period were similar minuscule as of May 23: 2.4% for PCR testing encounters and 3.1% for rapid testing encounters.