Fortune hit a man in the bakery aisle at the supermarket. Two others worked the night shift at a Subway cafeteria. Yet another was removed from a list of 15,000 candidates.
With millions of Americans waiting for their chance to get the coronavirus vaccine, a lucky few are falling behind as clinics struggle to get rid of extra perishable doses later in the day.
It is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Sometimes, people who are close to a clinic at the time of closing are offered the surplus injections that would otherwise be thrown away. Sometimes, health professionals go looking for recipients. Some places maintain waiting lists and draw names at random. These opportunities may be becoming more valued as the scarcity in the US leads some places to cancel vaccines.
“One of the nurses said I should buy a lottery ticket right now,” said Jesse Robinson, outside a clinic in Nashville, Tennessee, this week, where the 22-year-old was chosen from a list of 15,000 names for a chance. “I won’t be asking too much. I’m glad it was me. “
David MacMillan was picking up ingredients for a coconut chickpea dish at a Giant grocery store in Washington when a woman in a lab coat from the store’s pharmacy came up to him and his friend.
“I received two doses of the Moderna vaccine. The pharmacy closes within 10 minutes. Do you want them? “MacMillan, 31, remembered the woman saying.” I thought, ‘Let’s go on’. “
After MacMillan posted a video of his experience at TikTok, the supermarket chain was flooded for days with calls and people hanging around, hoping to get a chance.
It has become one of the most unusual peculiarities in the one-month, often irregular, distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
Once a vial is defrosted from the freezer and, moreover, once its seal is punctured and the first dose is withdrawn, those who administer the vaccine are in a rush to use it before it spoils ̶ even if it means giving injections for those who do not fit the priority list.
While it can be disturbing to see a 20-something woman getting an injection while a 90-year-old woman in a nursing home is still waiting, public health experts say that putting a dose on someone’s arm, anyone’s arm, it’s better than throwing it away.
“As far as I’m concerned, vaccinate anyone but the dog,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University.
Hair colorist Hanna Widger was warned by a client about Los Angeles clinics, where she could get a remaining dose later in the day.
“It almost looked very secretive and in disguise,” she said. “Almost like this obscure drug business.”
She said she started to cry when she got the chance: “It was almost like you have been running this marathon since March and you just finished the race. It was very exciting.”
In New York City, a rumor that the Brooklyn Army Terminal had extra doses sparked a rush to the vaccine dispensing site, leading to massive traffic on the streets and a line of hundreds on the sidewalks until the police left for say they had been duped.
Mike Schotte, 53, and his 72-year-old mother started showing up at pharmacies near their home in Hurst, Texas, hoping to get a remaining dose. Finally, they put their names on a waiting list and received a call saying that doses could be available if they arrived within half an hour.
“We don’t need to accelerate, but it was very close,” said Schotte. “I’m excited to have done it.”
Nashville started its lottery system to avoid more random ways of distributing the remaining photos. In one case last month, the city’s health department ended up giving extra shots to two employees of a Subway restaurant at a nearby hospital so they wouldn’t go to waste.
In any case, those who were lucky enough to get the first chance reserve a spot for a second, a few weeks later.
Vaccination clinics expect only a few doses left, at most, on any given day. Providers also note that the chances of leftover vaccines becoming available to the general public are decreasing with each passing week, as eligibility for the vaccine goes beyond the very elderly, nursing home residents and health care professionals. facing.
Residues are common in global inoculation campaigns, with millions of doses of flu vaccines destroyed each year. According to an estimate by the World Health Organization, more than half of all vaccines are thrown away because they have been mishandled, not claimed or expired. The launch of the coronavirus seems to have countered the trend.
Although federal data is not available, health officials in several jurisdictions contacted by The Associated Press reported very little waste other than a few notable cases of doses that were accidentally or deliberately spoiled.
In Cook County, Chicago, Illinois, the health department reported that only three of the 87,750 doses were missed, each accidentally spilled by the team. In Ohio, officials said 165 of the 459,000 doses distributed until last week were damaged or lost in traffic, thrown out due to no vaccine or otherwise lost. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Houston and other cities and states also reported minimal fractions of waste.
“It’s like gold in Fort Knox,” said Dr. Ramon Tallaj, whose network of doctors SOMOS has administered the vaccine in New York City.
Those who distribute the vaccines are choreographing an intricate dance to ensure they are treated correctly. The Pfizer vaccine bottles contain five doses – and sometimes an extra one – and Moderna contains 10. And clinics do their best not to open a new container unless they have a registered container scheduled to be inoculated.
At a clinic on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Jill Price said that as the end of the day approaches, if it looks like some doses will be left, calls are made to those registered for vaccinations the next day to see if they can enter immediately.
“It is such a precious commodity that no one wants to waste it,” said Price.
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Associated Press writers Kristin M. Hall in Nashville and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.