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As many as 20,000 people may have had COVID-19 vaccination appointments at Stony Brook University canceled after officials in New York state said a web link from The listing had been poorly publicized, a senior Governor Andrew M. Cuomo official said on Friday.
Melissa DeRosa told a press conference that Thursday evening “we have become aware of unpublished links that should be posted. [Friday] for some sites… the assumption is that it has been hacked or that someone has disclosed the link. “
While “we understand the frustration if someone gets the link,” in the interests of fairness, the state canceled the appointments, she said. She described the vaccine shortage the state faces as “7 million people fighting over 250,000 vaccines.”
The state inspector general’s office is examining how and why the link was released.
Residents of Long Island affected by the incident described the experience as infuriating, mystifying or bitterly disappointing in interviews Thursday night and Friday. What had seemed like fluke – a sign-up link with appointments available within days of each other, in some cases – deteriorated when emails from the state Department of Health went through started arriving around 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
“You made a vaccination appointment for a state-run site via an inactive link that was shared without permission,” the emails read in part. “Your appointment and confirmation have been canceled.”
At Friday’s press conference, Cuomo did not specifically address the issue to Stony Brook, but blamed much of the responsibility for the difficulty in scheduling vaccinations on the federal government.
“What they did was like open the floodgates of eligibility… they didn’t increase the supply,” Cuomo said.
He said the federal government had reduced the number of vaccines distributed to the state from 300,000 to 250,000 per week.
Start from nothing
Two retirees and a teacher who lost his appointments shared their papers and their frustration with Newsday.
“I’m angry, I’m exasperated, I feel so disappointed and now I have to start from scratch, and I don’t even know where to return,” said Sheryl Hanson, 74, retired Nesconset banker. . “Every place I’ve looked at for the past half hour doesn’t have an available appointment.”
Morgan Stanley retiree Lynne Dierlam, 68, of Williston Park, said she stayed up until 3 a.m. Wednesday, trying to find a vaccination site with open slots, a long desperate search as she cares for an immunocompromised brother. She then found the link and signed up.
Dierlam said that after receiving the email from the state, she resumed the date search for her brother and herself. She thought she had found a location in Jones Beach, but when she tried to make an appointment on the website, Dierlam quickly learned that there was none available. Jones Beach is booked until mid-April.
“It’s little things like that that let you know they don’t have the big picture yet,” she said.
Marcy Eager, 61, of Baldwin, a social studies teacher at Syosset High School, said she was thrilled when she thought she and her husband had dates for next Wednesday. “I felt guilty for not doing other work because I was looking for that golden ticket,” she said. “Finally, I feel good, I will be vaccinated next week, and now I realize that is not going to happen.”
Hanson got the link from a friend, Eager from a coworker, and Dierlam from his sister, who got it from a Facebook group for Long Island mothers.
Before receiving the state’s cancellation email, the women forwarded the link to friends and enthusiastically called relatives to share the good news.
Hanson said she was thrilled to think she could attend a granddaughter’s graduation ceremony. Eager to be able to focus once more on teaching, she made sure to alert her fellow teachers.
“Half of my school made appointments” using the link, Eager said. “We are spreading the word.”
A co-worker used the link and then canceled spring appointments he had already made at Jones Beach for himself and his elderly parents, Eager said.
Eager was adamant that she wasn’t trying to “play with the system”, but believed she was doing the right thing by passing the link on. The latest insult, she wrote in an email on Friday, came as she tried to help her colleague report: “The site is down, overloaded or says no appointments are missing. is available. I heard that other people have made appointments. know-how. “
Other Long Islanders reached out to Newsday on Friday morning, including Debbie Virga, 65, of East Northport, who said she lost a date over the Stony Brook incident.
Working six hours on three devices on Monday, Virga, the district clerk for Commack Schools, said she had scheduled a Jan.27 date in Long Island City. Then on Tuesday a teacher told her, “Stony Brook just opened.” She made a new appointment for January 21 and canceled the first one.
“I don’t want to be greedy. Let someone else have it,” she said.
Virga said she received an email from the state Thursday night telling her she lost the date at Stony Brook. Realizing that she needed to start all over again, she said that her heart was “falling”.
Virga said she was angry on behalf of colleagues who had lost dates for elderly relatives and angry at friends and neighbors who she said couldn’t navigate to register online or go to remote vaccination sites. She attributed this to an official failure: “We knew the vaccine was coming. Why wasn’t it planned? Why did we wait until the last minute?”
A ‘serious business’
The state, in a press release attributed to Marcy Stevens, general counsel for the state’s IT services office, said the “problem” with the link had been referred to the inspector general.
Lee Park, a spokesperson for the state inspector general’s office, told Newsday on Friday: “We are working as diligently as possible to find out the facts here.”
He added that the incident was “a serious matter” but said his office could not comment further on its investigation as it was ongoing.
Lawmakers in the region said they had received dozens of worried calls and messages from their constituents about the Stony Brook incident and the problems people were having in scheduling vaccinations.
“It is a total disaster and the most horrifying is that it is cruel punishment for the elderly,” Suffolk Legis said. Robert Trotta (R-Fort Salonga).
Trotta said better planning could have avoided what happened at Stony Brook, as well as other problems with vaccine registration. His 25-year-old daughter, a teacher, made a date this week for Jan. 20 with relative ease, he said, as he spent hours trying to schedule appointments for his parents, who are 80 years old. He was finally successful, he said, in getting their dates in early February – not at the same time, but four hours apart.
“There is no common sense here,” he said.
Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) has asked his constituents to be patient.
“There is no way to vaccinate 18 or 20 million people in a short period of time,” he said. “There is more demand than supply and that will create delays.”
While he was generally satisfied with the responsiveness of state officials to concerns raised by Long Island lawmakers during the pandemic, he said: “If we run out of [vaccine] supply, I don’t think it makes sense to open additional slots. ”
With Bart Jones, Bridget Murphy and David Reich-Hale
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