When South Bay resident Arjun Batra, 74, heard California Governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement in mid-January that individuals aged 65 and over were eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, he called his doctor, Kaiser Permanent, hoping to make an inoculation appointment.
After waiting three hours on hold, Batra said he finally spoke to a Kaiser representative who asked him a “standard set of questions”.
“Based on those responses, the next step was whether a consultation was available,” he said. “She said there are no appointments available for the deadline when the appointments were being made.”
He called the following week. Same thing. Three hours on hold, the same questions and again with no commitments.
“I asked to speak to the supervisor,” said Batra. “I said to supervisor Kaiser, ‘I’m not upset with you. I’m a little frustrated with the system. ‘ If you can try to streamline the system, if there are no compromises, there must be a faster way to find out that there are no compromises. You must have a system that doesn’t take hours to wait on the phone. “
Based on a friend’s tip, he downloaded the hospital app. He checked his primary hospital for an appointment; no luck. After two days, he tried again, opting for a more distant location. “He gave me three appointments,” he said.
Batra made an appointment for February 4, the day before his 75th birthday, at Kaiser’s Santa Clara facility in Homestead.
Days later, he received an email saying that the appointment was canceled with no information on how to reschedule.
“It was a long email,” he said. “’Due to the lack of vaccines, we are now prioritizing a different group of people, health professionals, aged 75 or over’, and everything. It didn’t give me any information on how I would get a new appointment. ”
Batra understands that the vaccine is scarce and believes that health professionals and those older should be prioritized. That said, he feels that the system is broken.
“I want them to prioritize healthcare professionals,” he said. “I am able to observe the quarantine. I can do everything from home. But not everyone is as lucky and blessed as I am.”
Batra is not alone: the process of obtaining the vaccine, for thousands of elderly people across the bay area, has been hampered by delays, bureaucracy, inconsistency and, perhaps most strikingly, the lack of vaccines.
Several seniors who spoke to SFGATE experienced countless obstacles in their efforts to obtain the vaccine, spending hours maneuvering dysfunctional websites and confused customer service representatives – symptoms of a frustrating and awkward implementation.
“It is the system that is not smooth and productive and is wasting a lot of time and causing a lot of frustration,” said Batra. “We need to smooth out the systems.”
A CVS pharmacist administers the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a resident in the Emerald Court senior community in Anaheim, California, on Friday, January 8, 2021.
MediaNews Group / Orange County Re / MediaNews Group via Getty Images, Media News Group / Getty Images‘Full of dishonesty’
When Newsom announced the move to the age-based priority for the COVID-19 vaccine last month, it should have been a time of relief for the elderly.
Public health officials praised the measure, considering it the best decision for the good of the state’s population, given the limited number of vaccines available.
Dr. Tomás J. Aragón, director of the California Department of Public Health, said the move could reduce the number of hospitalizations and benefit Californians in general, according to Sacramento Bee.
But the sudden change from the initial California launch proved to be chaotic for patients and doctors.
James Moldovan, a 70-year-old San Francisco resident and cancer survivor, said the confusion came after the warning, as some providers were offering the vaccine to individuals aged 65 and over, while others only to those aged 75 or older. more.
Moldova’s health care provider Sutter Health made it clear that those who are 75 years old or older or work in community health services are being prioritized, but he has not been able to get an estimated date for when he might be vaccinated. (A hospital representative declined to comment further with SFGATE.)
“I sent an email to my doctor and he said, basically, you’re kind of on your own,” said Moldovan, who was confined to his car-free home throughout the pandemic. “That has been the message of that. And that is not an encouraging message that you are alone.”
Meanwhile, Moldovan has a 72-year-old friend who was vaccinated by his provider and another acquaintance, a donor to a hospital, reportedly received special treatment.
“The launch was fraught with dishonesty,” he said. “The role of the city is to initiate and ensure good public policies. The city could coordinate with the Kaisers and Sutters … they are not being completely honest with people.” said the Moldovan.
‘We understand the frustration’
Even for those who can schedule appointments, the process was fraught with obstacles.
In Santa Clara County, nearly 5,000 elderly people – Batra among them – scheduled for the COVID-19 vaccine at Kaiser hospitals had their appointments canceled.
The Los Angeles Times reported for the first time on Tuesday that Kaiser did not obtain the number of vaccines it had predicted, an estimated number from previous shipments and government guidance.
“We understand the frustration that this causes and continue to do everything we can to increase the supply of vaccines, working in partnership with the municipal, state and federal governments,” said a Kaiser spokesman. “They plan to schedule each individual aged 75 or older, but said that younger seniors will have to wait until there is a” significant increase in vaccine supply. “
To the north, in Sonoma County, another crisis unfolded on the same day. A leaked link from the county’s website has resulted in thousands of people aged 65 to 74 applying for a vaccine before age 75 or older. After it went viral on social media, thousands of appointments were canceled and the county apologized.
“Mistakes are made, and I will guess that more mistakes will be made because we are trying so hard to get it right,” said Chris Coursey, of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, according to KTVU.
Sonoma County spokesman Matt Brown said the site has been changed to clearly specify that only individuals over 75 can be vaccinated.
‘Solved my problems’
Some hospitals are devising strategies to avoid canceling appointments and UCSF said it has not yet canceled any.
“We are scheduling just a few days at a time to avoid this type of scenario,” wrote UCSF spokeswoman Elizabeth Fernandez in an email to SFGATE.
Until Sunday, UCSF administered 40,268 vaccines, according to Fernandez.
“Our vaccines were for employees and interns who are at the greatest risk of exposure, as well as for patients,” said Fernandez. “We also vaccinated non-UCSF health professionals in partnership with the city and the county of San Francisco.”
And despite a myriad of obstacles, the elderly are successfully obtaining vaccines, often trying different paths and suddenly finding the one that works.
Jeff Neustadt, a 76-year-old San Francisco resident, is on Medicare with a supplement and was unable to obtain any information on how to access the vaccine from his primary care physician.
After spending at least 10 hours making calls and checking websites, he signed up through Sutter and made an appointment in San Mateo – after hearing a tip that they were distributing vaccines to nonmembers.
“I was between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “It took many hours, many phone calls.”
That said, Neustadt acknowledged that he was lucky, in retrospect.
“It would be difficult for someone who was not mobile because my appointment was in San Mateo.”
And in Sonoma County, where the scheduling site fiasco occurred, 82-year-old Richard Hirsch successfully navigated everything. “I solved my problems,” he said.
Despite some initial confusion about when he would be vaccinated, he managed to find several local consultations. He is scheduled to have his first chance later this week.
“I’m in good shape,” he said.