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STORY UPDATED AT 6:00 PM: This story has been updated to reflect that the actual dose increase for the elderly at the Oregon Convention Center is unclear.
The Oregon Health Authority has announced that it will provide large clinic providers with at least 15,000 doses of COVID-19 per week for three weeks to immunize people 65 years of age and older in Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Columbia counties .
It is not known how much of an increase from the overall immunization doses currently allocated each week to clinic operators at the Oregon Convention Center and Portland International Airport. The state and local health care providers who run the mass vaccination sites did not answer questions about the numbers on Monday.
Officials also announced that they have made a significant change to the way Portland-area seniors book dates at the Convention Center. Seniors still have to register and wait to be randomly selected from the state’s getvaccinated.oregon.gov registry. But once selected, seniors will no longer have to wait for a phone call from a busy call center to make an appointment. Instead, they’ll receive an individualized link via email that they can use to choose from available meeting times and book appointments on their own, state officials said.
The changes come after the state unveiled its new lottery system last week. The Convention Center vaccination site booked only 1,950 new appointments through this system, with call center workers contacting Oregonians and making the appointments manually.
“To improve this manual and time-consuming process, this new approach will now allow much faster (appointments) and higher volumes, which will be necessary as the vaccine supply grows,” reads Monday in A press release.
While the Oregon Health Authority said in a press release that it has committed to allocating at least 15,000 doses to the operators of the Convention Center clinic, a state spokesperson said that this figure ” could include »doses destined for the mass vaccination site at Portland International Airport. The clinics are jointly managed by Oregon Health & Science University, Legacy Health, Providence Health & Services, and Kaiser Permanente.
The Health Authority described the 1,950 appointments scheduled last week at the Convention Center as “a successful weekend pilot” – but some seniors said it took between 48 hours and over 72 hours before the call center contacted them, they couldn’t contact them. someone live on 211 to ask questions, or they haven’t received an email confirming their appointments.
Others were disappointed that they weren’t selected at all and said the process was moving too slowly. Still, many were relieved that they didn’t have to argue online for dates at a certain time – and endure a slow website that sometimes froze or started them up, as it had in recent weeks.
Health Authority director Patrick Allen said he expects 70% to 75% of seniors to have received their first doses by the end of March. Currently, about 42% of Oregonians 65 and older have received at least one dose.
Portland-area healthcare providers have designated the Convention Center for vaccinations for older people without mobility issues. Providers say a visit to the Palais des Congrès may involve standing or waiting an hour or two.
Seniors with mobility issues are urged to try scheduling appointments at the Portland-area’s other mass vaccination location, the airport drive-thru vaccination site – where many people scheduled to injections spent hours in their car on Saturday. To make an appointment, seniors must still log in at 9 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays to try to get a vaccination time.
This Monday, as has been the case on recent Mondays and Thursdays, the upcoming meetings at the airport took place in 10 to 15 minutes.
It’s unclear which appointment recording system the state and local healthcare providers will use on March 29, when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians aged 45 and over with underlying illnesses – as well as homeless people and frontline workers such as agricultural workers – – will be eligible for vaccinations.
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– Aimee Green; [email protected]; @o_aimee
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