My state recently opened up a lot of vaccine appointments... at retail pharmacies. They can only be made online and the website works badly. This means that only those people with a good internet connection and lots of time, at the moment when appointments open, can schedule themselves. The state health department still is running clinics, and has a list, and they will eventually call you with an appointment, but... not soon.
My mother is already fully vaccinated because she is not only a health care worker but also volunteers at a safety net clinic and also is a vaccination volunteer for the state. My father is old enough to qualify for the current phase, but nothing has been happening.
You see where this is going, right? I stalked the pharmacy website until I got him an appointment and he'll get a first dose Sunday. I feel not great that the whole process is so difficult for so many people, but on the other hand he does legitimately qualify for a vaccine now, and it's at a nearby pharmacy, so I'm not taking a geographically-allocated-by-population dose away from someone else. But the whole thing leaves me feeling slightly icky.
Here, both our local hospitals and several local pharmacies are running vaccine clinics -- but yes, for the most part signing up is done online. Also, you have to be in a qualifying group to even register. Both my husband and I are educators, so we qualified; but none of my students do.
ReplyDeleteOur students are plague rats. From a purely transmission standpoint, they should do them ALL. Soon.
DeleteRight? The state has now moved to the next group, which includes students who live in dorms; but most of our students live at home.
DeleteIn our county, they decided to give more to rite aid/walgreens instead of the big hospital chains to improve equity. the hospitals have random drawings of previous patients. just like your experience, rite aid/walgreens requires fast internet & lots of sleuthing to get the appointments just as they are released. doesn't seem much more equitable to me....
ReplyDeleteI do not like!
DeleteApparently here 60% of Health dept calls go unanswered because some genius with the state let it show as "unknown number" rather than " Vaccinations" or whatever. Getting in touch with elders has been a mess. If only they'd had a whole year to plan it...
One of my husband's relatives manages a pharmacy in a state with pharmacy vaccinations and they've been having to throw out a lot of second shots because people will not come in during the right windows. Big clinics that throw a wide net are so much of a better idea for when we have limited quantities of a perishable good, just in terms of numbers of people. I hope J&J enables workplaces to start having their own clinics to get grocery store workers and other front line workers taken care of easily.
ReplyDeleteOur county offers free transportation to the clinic site for people who live in the county, which is nice. We're a practice site for the national guard so they're trying things. Signing up is online but the library will help if you call them (according to local news stories).
There's barely a waitlist for the county next to ours doing drive-through only-- one of my friends realized she qualified and signed up and got an appointment for two days later.
Ugh, how frustrating to have to throw any out! My mom has been doing some of the big clinics where they do 5000 people in a day and you're right, they don't throw out a single dose.
DeletePhilly has started doing apartment tour clinics for elders - literally going door to door- and it's such a good idea.