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A health official said the lack of centralized registration systems to book appointments for vaccines has led, in some cases, to “chaos and confusion” as multiple sites administer the vaccine “according to different times, with different portals and registration platforms ”.
COVID-19 vaccinations are on the rise in the Washington area, but so too is the frustration of scheduling an appointment.
Just over 1.5 million people across DC, Maryland, and Virginia have received arm injections since federally-provided COVID-19 vaccine doses first emerged in late September. last year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But millions more are eligible.
The extremely limited supply is just one problem, however, said Dr Travis Gayles, Montgomery County health official, who appeared before members of the Washington Council of Metropolitan Governments on Wednesday afternoon.
Gayles, who represented county health officials when he appeared before the regional body, said the lack of centralized registration systems to book vaccine appointments has led, in some cases, to the “Chaos and confusion” because several sites administer the vaccine “on different schedules, with different portals and registration platforms. “
In all three jurisdictions, hospitals and retail pharmacies, such as Giant and CVS, receive doses of the vaccine to be supplied to the public. But that means residents often have to monitor multiple websites, sometimes for hours a day, to try to book an appointment – and the different online systems don’t “talk” to each other, Gayles said.
“States have a registration system that is different from the registration system, in some cases with hospitals, which is different from the registration system of pharmacies… It is difficult to be able to follow a person through a system” , Gayles said.
In Maryland, officials have championed the decentralized vaccine delivery system as being more “agile” and a way to ensure there is no single point of failure if a website goes down or is outdated.
But the profusion of online registrations has led to frustration in the region.
In Virginia, officials conceded this week that launching a partnership with CVS was “not an ideal deployment” after opening an online registration site supposed to be reserved for pre-registered people. from local health services. General public.
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Falls Church City Council member David Snyder said the frustration of residents waiting to be vaccinated revolves around a question: What is right?
“If you’re 65 and you can’t get the shot, you think it’s not fair. If you live in a vulnerable community and are an essential worker, and you are not able to get vaccinated, you think it is not fair, ”he said.
Snyder urged local health officials to be specific about how many doses they need so local authorities can better defend them.
Gayles acknowledged that vaccine distribution is a “numbers game” and, at the moment, “the numbers don’t add up”.
In Montgomery County, approximately 60,000 doses of the vaccine have been distributed to residents of the county so far, but there are five times as many people – 300,000 residents – eligible to receive the vaccines.
Given the limited federal supply, splitting the doses between local health departments and private providers, such as retail pharmacies, is also tantamount to a zero-sum game, Gayles said.
“Right now, in a limited supply, all the doses that go to Safeway, Giant, Rite Aid, CVS, independent living places, retirement homes, health services, hospitals come from one. pool, ”Gayles said. “And so when it comes to a fixed pool, every time you transfer doses to one place, you ultimately pull doses out of it from another platform, and that creates a kind of competition, which we do not want.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said the federal government needs to clarify what the priorities should be.
Montgomery County and the state of Maryland prioritized healthcare workers first and then residents aged 75 and over as part of phases 1a and 1b of the vaccine deployment plan. “Before we got to half of that group, they said we were prioritizing 1c,” which includes people aged 65 to 74.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said the outgoing Trump administration and the current Biden administration had pressed states to open up eligibility more widely, even though the number of doses had not increased.
Speaking on Wednesday, Elrich said: “We need the federal government to reaffirm the priorities in vaccine distribution,” which means ensuring that there are enough doses provided to cover the entire population that is prioritized. at one point.
“If you want to restore order: let people know who gets vaccinated (and) when they get vaccinated, so people can watch the progress we’re making and know when their turn comes,” Elrich said. “But right now it’s chaos.”
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