A health official said that the lack of centralized registration systems to schedule vaccine appointments has in some cases led to “chaos and confusion”, as several locations are administering the vaccine “at different times, with portals and health platforms. different registry “.
The COVID-19 vaccination is steadily increasing across the DC region – but so is the frustration of making an appointment.
Just over 1.5 million people in DC, Maryland and Virginia have received injections in the arm since doses of the COVID-19 vaccine provided by the federal government first appeared last year, according to data from the Centers for Control and Prevention of Diseases.
But millions more are eligible.
The extremely limited supply is just a problem, said Montgomery County health officer Dr. Travis Gayles, who appeared before members of the Washington Council of Governments on Wednesday afternoon.
Gayles, who was representing county health officials in his presentation to the regional body, said the lack of centralized registration systems to schedule vaccine appointments has in some cases led to “chaos and confusion”, as several locations they are administering the vaccine “at different times, with different portals and registration platforms. “
In all three jurisdictions, hospitals and retail pharmacies, such as Giant and CVS, are receiving doses of vaccine to be provided to the public. But that means that residents often need to monitor multiple sites, sometimes for hours a day, to try to get an appointment – and the various online systems don’t “talk” to each other, Gayles said.
“States have a registration system different from the registration system, in some cases, of hospitals, which is different from the registration system of pharmacies … It is difficult to track a person through a system,” said Gayles.
In Maryland, officials have defended the decentralized vaccine delivery system as more “agile” and a way to ensure that there is not a single point of failure if a site goes down or is hacked.
But the profusion of online applications has generated frustration in the region.
In Virginia, officials admitted this week that launching a partnership with CVS “was not an ideal launch” after an online registration site that should be reserved for people who had pre-registered with local health departments was opened for the general public.
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David Snyder, a member of the Falls Church City Council, said that the frustration of residents waiting to be vaccinated revolves around a question: what is fair?
“If you’re 65 and can’t get the vaccine, you think it’s not fair. If you live in a vulnerable community and are an essential worker, and cannot receive the vaccine, you think that is not fair, ”he said.
Snyder asked local health officials to be specific about the number of doses they need so that local authorities can better defend them.
Gayles acknowledged that distributing the vaccine is a “numbers game” and, at the moment, “the numbers don’t match”.
In Montgomery County, some 60,000 doses of the vaccine have been distributed to county residents so far, but there are five times more people – 300,000 residents – eligible to receive the vaccines.
Given the limited federal supply, allocating doses between local health departments and private providers, such as retail pharmacies, is also tantamount to a zero-sum game, Gayles said.
“At the moment, in a limited supply, all doses going to Safeway, Giant, Rite Aid, CVS, independent homes, nursing homes, health departments and hospitals are coming from one pool,” said Gayles. “And so, when this is a fixed pool, whenever you move the doses to one place, you are finally taking the doses from another platform and that creates a kind of competition, which we don’t want to happen.”
Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich said the federal government needs to make clear what the priorities should be.
Montgomery County and the state of Maryland prioritized health professionals first and then residents aged 75 or older in Phase 1a and 1b of the vaccine distribution plan. “Before we reached half of that group, they said that we are prioritizing 1c”, which includes people aged 65 to 74.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that both the leaving Trump administration and the current Biden administration have pressured states to open eligibility more widely, although the number of doses has not increased.
Speaking on Wednesday, Elrich said: “We need the federal government to reaffirm priorities in the distribution of vaccines”, which means ensuring that sufficient doses are provided to cover the entire population that is prioritized at any time.
“If you want to bring the order back: let people know who is being vaccinated (and) when they will be vaccinated, so that people can look at the progress we are making and find out when their turn will come,” said Elrich. “But now, it’s chaos.”