COVID-19 vaccine: Riverside County officials correct appointment issue but supply remains issue

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) – A new report suggests California ranks last compared to other states for the percentage of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered.

According to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, California administered only 37.3% of its vaccine supply.

Locally, residents of Riverside County are among those expressing frustration at not being able to register for vaccine appointments on the county’s website.

“I don’t lose sleep over it, but let’s put it this way, I’m tired of being locked up,” said Cynthia Edwards of Menifee, who not only says she’s in the 65+ category. , but that she is also a substitute teacher.

She said whenever she tried to sign up for vaccine appointments on the Riverside County website, there weren’t any available.

“I know people who are 20 years younger than us and seem to get it,” Edwards said. “I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“I called my own health care provider, and they said they had 2,000 vaccines. They’re running a lottery of algorithms to determine which of their 10,000 patients is most at risk of getting it.

Riverside County officials acknowledged a glitch on their website that caused it to crash shortly after appointments were made available at noon Thursday. They say that while the problem has been fixed, it is not entirely under their control.

“The website is a partnership in that part of it is done across the county, and part of it is through a state platform,” said Dr Geoffrey Leung of Riverside University Health System. “The state platform is being updated.”

Leung said a pilot program is currently being tested by two other counties to see if improvements to the platform will be beneficial and increase the stability of county COVID-19 vaccine websites. But the biggest problem isn’t the website itself, but rather the limited supply of the vaccine.

“The main challenge we currently have with the vaccine is procurement,” Leung said. “If you look at the state of California, the total allocation so far is only sufficient to deliver the vaccine to 5% of the population.”

Riverside County has announced 10,000 more vaccine appointments that will be available online at noon this Saturday. These appointments can be made on the county website here.

Residents of San Bernardino County can request vaccine appointments at the county’s website here.