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Some residents of Orange County have been complaining for weeks about problems with the county’s new COVID-19 vaccine application, Othena, and the county’s vaccination program – and their concerns now appear to have peaked.
County supervisors said they heard voters talk about issues with scheduling appointments, a lack of language choices other than English, and the inability to find a live person to answer the call. hotline set up to help users solve their problems with the application.
Third District Supervisor Don Wagner said in a Tuesday January 26 meeting that Othena “fears” and, despite reluctance to use the word in a public forum, he was “not sure he there is a better word I can use ”.
In emails to reporters and in social media posts, potential users of the app and associated website have described issues when trying to check in or schedule a meeting with vaccination, with slots being mistakenly allocated to people who were not yet eligible for vaccination, and the inability to get help on a hotline the county created for this purpose.
Several executives from Composite Apps, the Irvine-based company that received $ 1.2 million to develop and manage Othena for the county, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
County officials pointed out that while the app had problems, thousands of people were able to make an appointment and get vaccinated at the county’s two large-scale sites, at Disneyland in Anaheim and at the University. Soka by Aliso Viejo. They urged patience as the supply of vaccine doses in Orange County lags far behind demand, causing some of the frustration among people.
As of the last week ending Sunday, Jan.24, public vaccination sites and healthcare providers administered around 10,000 injections per day, an improvement from the previous week, when around 5,900 were given each day, according to the latest data from the OC Health Care Agency. Overall, 148,000 residents and workers in Orange County have received one or both doses since vaccination began with frontline health workers in mid-December.
On Tuesday, OC health worker Dr Clayton Chau pointed to the widespread use of Othena – nearly half a million people have tried it – and said some might be frustrated because the Simply registering through the app does not guarantee users an appointment.
He also said the app served several purposes (registering people, making appointments for the first and second doses, and sending data to the state), and he attributed some of the problems to the appointment slots. limited by the scarcity of vaccine stocks.
Asked why the foreign language options weren’t included early on, Chau said the goal was to make sure the app was working properly before translating the information to avoid having to do fixes in several languages.
But first district supervisor Andrew Do, who chairs the board of supervisors, said some people who couldn’t use the app then tried the hotline and were never able to get a response, or no one was. available who spoke their language.
“People understand the supply is limited,” Do said. “I think these are the challenges which for the average person is like when you are designing a system, these are issues that should have been thought about right away, not 30 days after starting the process and still struggling. . “
Chau said fixes are coming: Spanish and Vietnamese options could be available by the end of this week, Korean and Mandarin will follow soon; the eight-person staff for the county vaccine hotline will be increased to 20 people, and the hotline’s hours can be extended until evening.
As the county works on its app, the state has announced it is testing My Turn, a web-based tool that will eventually allow people across the state to check if they are eligible for a coronavirus vaccine and ” be notified when it is their turn. The website will also provide medical providers and public health officials with a streamlined way to quickly report dose administration, data the state relies on to inform decisions about which groups to focus on next. .
The tool is part of a larger initiative by state health leaders to better organize the piecemeal vaccination campaign in California, which includes public and private health systems, pharmacies, hospitals, clinics community health, pop-up and mobile sites.
“We want to make sure that nothing is slowing the delivery of the vaccine other than the rate at which the vaccine arrives in the state, and we are going to do so with a balance of safety, speed and fairness while scaling up to reach vaccine level.” needed in the state, ”Secretary of the Government Operations Agency Yolanda Richardson said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Only healthcare workers and people 65 and older in Los Angeles and San Diego counties can immediately book appointments during this pilot, but the program is expected to be extended to all residents of the state. “In the coming weeks,” said Richardson.
Orange County officials asked Chau about My Turn, which Gov. Gavin Newsom first announced on Monday, but it was not immediately clear how the state site will work with Othena, or whether unvaccinated OC residents would be encouraged to use one or the other, or both.
“I believe the state will have a conversation with us about how we can integrate” the two systems, Chau said.
He also noted that the county health agency received about 20% of the vaccine doses allocated to Orange County; the rest goes to hospitals and providers – but the state recently allowed local health officials to redistribute doses from private providers who are unable to use them in a timely manner.
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