More than 4,500 residents of Santa Clara County missed the vaccine appointments they booked at Levi’s Stadium last week, prompting the county to establish waiting lists and ensure that no doses of the vaccine were missed.
About 10% of people who schedule vaccinations in places administered by the county have so far not appeared in the process, as officials told the NBC Bay Area. And without an existing waiting list, a now familiar scenario took place at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds on Saturday. Officials realized that due to a no-show, they had 300 doses that were defrosted and would go to waste, and then emails, phone calls and text messages were sent to county officials, telling them to get in line and take injections if they wanted them.
Some doses were also administered to the public.
It is not clear whether the vaccine was unnecessarily thawed at Levi’s Stadium as well, but the NBC Bay Area reports through county officials that there were 4,517 no-shows between February 8 and 12. And the county says it’s probably due to too many people scheduling more than one appointment, for fear that one could be canceled – a series of appointment cancellations has taken place in Santa Clara County and elsewhere in the past few weeks due to supply disruptions of the vaccine.
County officials say no doses were missed at Levi’s, despite all no-shows.
Dr. David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, told the NBC Bay Area that this pattern will continue and it is unforgivable that counties do not have mitigation plans in place – waiting lists and other means of distributing extra vaccine as soon as it is defrosted.
“Having a waiting list available and a plan to mitigate the problem so that you don’t have a good dose left over and little time to deal with it,” said Dr. Magnus.
Situations like this have been occurring across the country, allowing young, healthy people to jump ahead of the official lines and receive their first doses – after which second doses are usually guaranteed.
In one case, in early January, a hospital in Ukiah had a freezer failure where a batch of 850 doses of vaccine was being stored, and doctors realized they had only a few hours before the vaccine became unviable due to thawing. A riot ensued in which hundreds of residents lined up to get their first shots ahead of most of the state.
Photograph: Ash Kalra / Twitter