Some Orange County residents have been complaining for weeks about problems with the county’s new COVID-19 vaccine application, Othena, and the county’s vaccination program – and their concerns appear to have reached their highest levels.
County supervisors said they heard from constituents about problems with scheduling appointments, the lack of language options other than English, and the inability to get a live person to answer the hotline created to help users with their problems with app.
Third District Supervisor Don Wagner said at a meeting on January 26, Tuesday, that Othena “sucks” and, despite fears of using that word in a public forum, he “wasn’t sure if there was a better word for me to use “.
In emails to reporters and social media posts, potential users of the app and the related website described failures when trying to register or schedule a vaccination appointment, places being mistakenly given to people who were not yet eligible for vaccination, and the inability to get help on a hotline that the county has created for that purpose.
Several executives at Composite Apps, an Irvine-based company that received $ 1.2 million to develop and manage Othena for the county, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
County officials pointed out that, although the app had problems, thousands of people were able to make appointments and get vaccinated at two major locations in the county, Disneyland in Anaheim and Soka University in Aliso Viejo. They asked for patience, as the supply of vaccines from Orange County is far short of demand, causing part of people’s frustration.
Last week, which ended on Sunday, January 24, public vaccination sites and health professionals administered about 10,000 vaccines per day, an improvement over the previous week, when about 5,900 were administered each day, according to with the latest data from the OC Health Care Agency. Overall, 148,000 Orange County residents and workers have received one or both doses since the vaccination began with frontline health staff in mid-December.
On Tuesday, OC health officer Dr. Clayton Chau pointed to the widespread use of Othena – almost half a million people have tried it – and said that some may be frustrated because simply registering through the app does not guarantee users a query.
He also said that the app is serving several purposes (registering people, making appointments for the first and second doses and sending data to the state) and attributed some of the problems to limiting service hours due to the scant supply of vaccine.
Asked why foreign language options were not included from the start, Chau said the goal was to ensure that the app was working perfectly before translating the information to avoid having to make corrections in multiple languages.
But the first district supervisor Andrew Do, who chairs the Board of Supervisors, said that some people who couldn’t use the app tried the hotline and never got an answer, or there was no one who spoke their language.
“People understand that there is limited supply,” said Do. “I think it is the challenges that, for the average person, it is like when you design a system, these are issues that should have been considered immediately, not 30 days after the process started and still struggling against it.”
Chau said corrections are coming: Spanish and Vietnamese options may be available by the end of this week, with Korean and Mandarin soon; the eight-person team for the county vaccine hotline will be strengthened to 20 people, and the hotline hours can be extended at night.
While the county is working on its application, the state has announced that it is testing My Turn, a web tool that will allow people across the state to check whether they are eligible for a coronavirus injection and be notified when it is their turn. The site will also give medical service providers and public health officials a simplified way to quickly report dose administration, data the state depends on to inform decisions about which groups to focus on next.
The tool is part of a broader effort by state health leaders to better organize California’s fragmented vaccination campaign, which consists of public and private health systems, pharmacies, hospitals, community health clinics and pop-up and mobile sites. .
“We want to make sure that nothing slows down the administration of the vaccine, except the rate at which the vaccine reaches the state, and we will do this by balancing safety, speed and equity while expanding to meet the level of vaccine needed in the state,” said the secretary of the State Government Operations Agency, Yolanda Richardson, at a news conference on Tuesday.
Only health professionals and people aged 65 and over in Los Angeles and San Diego counties can make appointments immediately during this pilot, but the program is expected to expand to all residents of the state “in the coming weeks,” said Richardson.
Orange County officials asked Chau about My Turn, which Governor Gavin Newsom first announced on Monday, but it was not immediately clear how the state’s website will work with Othena, or whether unvaccinated CO residents would be encouraged to use one or the other, or both tools.
“I believe the state will have a conversation with us about how we can integrate” the two systems, said Chau.
He also noted that the county health agency is receiving about 20% of the vaccine doses allocated to Orange County; the rest are going to hospitals and healthcare providers – but the state recently authorized local health officials to redistribute doses from private providers who cannot use them in a timely manner.