Students, staff and faculty members at the University of Minnesota apparently set a world record on Tuesday. They held out their arms for 11,438 flu shots, the most ever given in a single day. The U blasted through the last official record of 3,271 flu shots established on Nov. 9, 2006, by Centra Care Hospital of Sanford, Fla. (That's according to Guinness World Records, which always verifies records before publishing them.)
The university even beat its chief local competitor, the Mayo Clinic, which last week gave 7,401 flu shots in Rochester. (Mayo had not registered with Guinness.)
The university's free one-day vaccination effort also served as a test of the university's emergency response system to see how many people can be inoculated in a short time. University officials said they were prepared to handle 10,000 or more employees and students Tuesday.
