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| Louisville Mail Journal
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Inundated with demands for COVID-19 vaccines for people 70 and older, Louisville’s three hospital systems have been forced to suspend new appointments – just three days after they started scheduling them.
Meanwhile, the waiting list of people seeking an appointment has grown to around 40,000 since Friday, University of Louisville Health chief medical officer Dr Jason Smith said on Monday during a call to the hurry.
Smith said demand for the vaccine simply exceeds supply.
“It’s going to take a little while to get through everyone,” Smith said.
He said the region’s three major hospital systems – U of L, Baptist Health and Norton Healthcare – are trying to accommodate people on the waiting list managed by the Louisville Department of Health.
Smith said the three systems are spreading names across the waiting list and will contact people as vaccine stocks become available.
“We try to open new appointments every week depending on our vaccine supply,” Smith said. “The vaccine supply has been quite variable. We could get 1,000 doses a week and three or four thousand next week.”
Your questions answered: When can I get a COVID-19 vaccine in Kentucky?
People who cannot get a date are encouraged to keep trying.
Jim Kinsman, 85, a retired Louisville investment manager, said he had tried and failed to secure appointments at all three hospitals for himself and his wife, 86 – an experience that, according to him, was very frustrating.
“Going online and having these sites say ‘come back later’ seems so ineffective,” he said. “It’s like going online and trying to get tickets to a concert.”
Smith asked people to keep trying to book appointments on the University of Health website and not try to call the teaching hospital.
“Don’t call,” he said, adding that the U of L was getting “thousands of calls” about the vaccine.
Vaccine supplies to states are designated by the federal government, and Smith said it was not known how many vaccines were available or if supplies were low, as some national news reports have said.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced earlier this month that he wants to step up the pace of vaccinations in Kentucky, focusing on those most at risk and school staff to bring children back from Kindergarten to Grade 12. year in in-person classes.
The three Louisville hospital systems announced on Friday that they would begin offering vaccines to people over 70 in addition to immunizing their own health workers. They were quickly inundated with requests.
Norton’s website says that due to high demand, “at the moment, hours are currently closed.” Spokeswoman Maggie Roetker said Norton will add more appointments as more vaccines become available and urged people to continue checking the website.
Context: Norton, U of L, Baptist Deploys Vaccines for People 70 and Older
The Baptist website also reports that there are no appointments available in Louisville. Baptist spokeswoman Julie Garrison said the hospital has been “inundated” with requests and hopes to be able to offer more appointments soon.
Smith said the U of L hopes to offer more appointments in the coming weeks, but the fluctuating supply of federally licensed vaccines makes it impossible to provide details on when people may be. wait there.
“Ideally, we would have enough vaccines to deliver thousands and thousands of doses a day, and that is just not the reality of what we are seeing in terms of vaccine distribution,” he said. declared.
Beshear announced earlier this month that anyone aged 70 or older would be eligible for the vaccine under phase 1B of state guidelines for the distribution of limited doses, along with first responders, such as police and firefighters, and school personnel.
The first doses of phase 1A are given to frontline health workers, residents and nursing home staff.
People aged 70 and over are prioritized for the vaccine because they are at the highest risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19.
Kentucky has approximately 500,000 people aged 70 or older, according to the State Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Smith said he doesn’t blame the government.
“Overall, they did a really good job getting it to the states, and the states did a really good job getting it to the hospitals,” Smith said.
More coverage: Should pregnant women take the COVID-19 vaccine?
Biden: current vaccine rollout is ‘a dismal failure’
President-elect Joe Biden called the current rollout of the coronavirus vaccine a “dismal failure” underlining his $ 1.9 trillion plan to fight the pandemic and provide further relief. (January 15)
AP
But President-elect Joe Biden criticized the outgoing Trump administration’s efforts to distribute the vaccine as a failure and said his goal was for Americans to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccines in the first 100 days of its administration.
To do this, Biden is pledging to add clinics, strengthen public health staff and invoke a wartime production law to ensure an adequate supply of vaccines.
So far, approximately 10.6 million Americans have received the first dose of the two-dose injection required for both vaccines by manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer / BioNtech approved for emergency use.
In Kentucky, which has a population of approximately 4.4 million, 213,567 doses of the vaccine were administered as of Monday, according to the state’s COVID-19 website.
Kinsman said he wanted someone at the state or local level to design a system in which people can book appointments as soon as they are available, rather than being told to keep going. try.
“Maybe they could do something to make it easier for us,” he said. “I would like to know that I have a place in the line.
For now, people looking to make an appointment for the vaccine can continue to try to do so through the hospital’s three websites.
People aged 70 and over who already have a patient record online through Norton will receive a direct message that will allow them to schedule an appointment for a vaccine. Others can go to nortonhealthcare.com/campaigns/covid-19-vaccine-tier1b or call 502-861-4499 to schedule.
To schedule a vaccine appointment with U of L Health, go to uoflhealth.org/louisville-covid-19-vaccinations.
Baptist Health has an online registration portal at baptisthealth.com/vaccine/schedule-now.
Latest issues: Less than 2,000 coronavirus cases reported on Monday
Contact Deborah Yetter at [email protected] or 502-582-4228. Find her on Twitter at @d_yetter.
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