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| Delaware News Journal
Delaware seniors flock to mass vaccination event
Hundreds of people in phase 1B line up to receive COVID vaccine at Delaware City DMV on Friday
John J. Jankowski Jr., Special for The News Journal
Editor’s note: The number of older adults who had Saturday appointments but were not vaccinated has been corrected. The Public Health Division initially provided incorrect statistics.
At nearly every stage of its inception, Delaware’s vaccination plan has caused confusion and frustration among healthcare workers, first responders and older adults who officials say deserve to be first. protected from the deadly effects of the novel coronavirus.
During the first month of the deployment, the state struggled to get the vaccine to primary care providers and other private offices without hospital affiliation who are considered to be part of the highest priority Phase 1A population. of State.
They were often left to chase doses through their own connections at the same time as the state’s vaccine tracking showed about half of its doses were unused.
The state then established large drive-thru immunization events focused on “sprinting” through the remainder of Phase 1A, but residents outside of this group began receiving immunizations during the events, which resulted in greater consternation.
Delaware moved to Phase 1B of its vaccination plan last week, making the pool of eligible beneficiaries roughly three times larger by including some essential workers and all residents 65 and over. The plan is to immunize most seniors at major driving events.
On the first official weekend of driving events, hundreds of older adults left the vaccination lines for hours on Saturday at DMV facilities in Delaware City and Georgetown. Those who arrived early or on time for their 30-minute scheduled windows waited several hours before being vaccinated.
According to the state’s vaccine tracker, approximately 70% of Delaware’s 96,325 doses were administered. Several thousand doses given over the weekend have not been added, which means the rate of vaccines given in Delaware is likely higher and ranks among the top states in the country.
But the recent push to vaccinate as many people as possible during major immunization events has left second doses for those vaccinated in recent weeks at risk with vaccine supply still limited across the country.
The Medical Society of Delaware said the Division of Public Health told their organization the state was unable to guarantee the availability of second doses and schedule specific sites for Delawarians to receive them.
According to an email obtained by Delaware Online / The News Journal, the Office of Emergency Medical Services, which helped orchestrate vaccine events for first responders, has suspended all previously scheduled second vaccine dose dates until further notice. order.
Those who were vaccinated at the state’s DMV events this weekend received an email to schedule a second dose online which directed them to a page with no options for future vaccination events.
In an email to the News Journal, Public Health Division spokesperson Jennifer Brestel said, “Second doses are provided as long as the government supply of vaccines to Delaware allows.”
Long before they worried about second doses, several older adults told the News Journal that they struggled to navigate the online appointment system required to be vaccinated during mass immunization events.
More than 10 months after the pandemic hit the first state, Delaware’s vaccination plan currently relies on the ability for seniors to navigate a series of emails to make an appointment and produce a QR code to present to volunteers at the vaccination site to prove they are done. a medical history form commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dorothy Cutting, an 86 year old woman who lives alone in Wilmington, first struggled to complete the “Captcha” to prove that she is not a robot, and is now waiting for an email that she has. says she has not yet received to continue to the next step in the process.
She describes herself as “not very computerized,” saying that she mainly uses her computer for puzzles and e-mail online. Even if she was given an appointment, a drive to the Delaware City DMV facility would be a non-starter, she said.
For her safety and the safety of others, she does not drive out of town due to her slow reaction time.
“For me, going to Delaware City is like telling me to drive in Alaska,” she says.
“The logistics are scary; they are so difficult,” she said. “If you can’t get a thousand people over there to get the shot, then don’t program a thousand people.
What caused Saturday’s backups?
The Public Health Division said that the inability of many people to complete the CDC’s form before their appointments contributed to Saturday’s delays. The agency also said the event was delayed by people showing up without an appointment, more people from Phase 1A showed up than expected and equipment issues due to the cold.
The situation appeared to improve on Sunday afternoon when the Public Health Division reported wait times of one hour in Delaware City and 15 to 20 minutes in Georgetown.
The agency sent messages to those who signed up for Sunday’s event asking them to complete the CDC questionnaire in advance, a step that was not included in the state’s initial message when it announced the start of phase 1B last week.
To speed up Sunday’s event, the Public Health Division added state soldiers at both locations to facilitate movement and moved the Phase 1A healthcare workers in Delaware City to a separate pool.
Spokeswoman Andrea Wojcik said the Delaware City and Georgetown facilities don’t have as much space as the Dover DMV facility, where the Public Health Division tested its system for Phase 1B on the week -end last. The agency was able to sort out some traffic problems overnight.
Because the extreme cold forced the Georgetown event to switch to a paper-based system because the computers were not functioning properly, some vaccinated people received an email saying their appointment was canceled. The Department of Health and Human Services said the emails should be ignored.
Several people who were vaccinated at Saturday’s event said they were happy with the way the event went despite the longer-than-expected wait times and had no difficulty navigating in the online registration system to make their first appointment.
“It was excellent,” said Rolando Toccafondi, a 77-year-old from Newark who was vaccinated with his wife after a six-hour wait on Saturday. “We were shocked. Everyone was so nice. Very, very supportive.”
But, 334 Delawarians who had Saturday appointments couldn’t stand the wait and walked out of the queue before being vaccinated or didn’t show up at all.
“It was a nightmare,” said Bonnie Siley, an 80-year-old woman who left the line Saturday in Delaware City.
Tina Alinskas spent about three hours online with her 89-year-old mother, Theresa Somkajlo, in Georgetown on Saturday morning. She said it would not have been possible for her mother to register on her own or cross the vaccination routes.
“There is no way, there are just too many stages,” said Alinskas. “The steps are confusing.”
And the second doses?
Alinskas receives a text message on Saturday evening, saying she could go online to register her mother for a second dose, which according to the vaccination record they received is expected to take place on February 19 or later.
The only date uploaded was February 20, and she couldn’t select it.
“Maybe they just aren’t ready to book dates yet, but I don’t know why they would say go to the site then,” she said.
Others said they were told by volunteers at DMV events that there was no plan for second doses next month.
Recipients of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should receive a second dose 21 days after the first and Moderna vaccine recipients should receive a second dose 28 days after the first.
The CDC said last week that second doses could be scheduled for up to six weeks after the first if they could not be administered within the recommended time frame.
In a virtual town hall on Tuesday night, Governor John Carney said the state needs to figure out how to ensure all second doses are available on time, both in terms of supply and their administration.
“I think we have a small amount of second doses like maybe some of our suppliers are, but there is a higher priority to move and attract more and more people with that first dose,” said Carney. “As we move forward, this supply has to increase.”
In the closing days of the Trump administration, outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar urged states to offer the vaccine to the elderly and to stop withholding second doses, saying the administration would release all his reserve doses.
Officials later clarified that all of those reserve doses were already reserved for people who had received the vaccine and that their release would support people who needed their second dose, not new groups of people who received their first vaccine.
Azar said that in the future, the federal government will include doses for new people as well as second doses in each weekly shipment. President Joe Biden echoed this policy when he announced his vaccination plan last week, according to the New York Times.
State officials said the second dose to the Delawareans depended on how much vaccine the federal government allocates to the state, which they said under Trump was uneven week to week and often below estimates. Last week, the state received 18,725 doses, according to its vaccine tracker.
Carney said Tuesday the state needs to speed up the process to demonstrate it can vaccinate more people than what is being delivered in order to get more doses.
“I didn’t want to risk losing an allocation in the future because we weren’t successful with our short-term thru-put,” Carney said Tuesday.
There are approximately 70,000 Delawarians who fall under phase 1A and over 200,000 that fall under phase 1B.
Contact Brandon Holveck at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter @holveck_brandon.
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