Residents of Santa Clara County on Tuesday may have received a text message saying that local medical providers had “extra” COVID-19 vaccines and should register for an appointment.
According to the county, these texts had an “unofficial” origin and health professionals are still vaccinating only residents in the state’s Phase 1A vaccination, which includes health professionals and long-term residents.
The municipality is still investigating the origin of these text messages and does not know how many people received the communication about the “extra” vaccines.
Supervisor Joe Simitian said he received several communications on Tuesday about this text asking individuals to apply for a vaccine.
“I am concerned that this may just be the tip of the iceberg,” said Simitian. “If someone is able to fundamentally undermine confidence in our enrollment system, it will have potentially catastrophic consequences.”
County executive Jeff Smith said that erroneous texts bypassed the state platform (CalVax) by signing up for a vaccination appointment. This site is not under the county’s jurisdiction.
“We will communicate with the state to find out how to improve the security of the program,” said Smith. “At the same time, we are going to expand our service population, so we don’t want the left hand to say ‘No, don’t show up’, while the right hand is saying ‘Yes, show up.’ “
South Bay health care providers are likely to soon expand to Phase 1B Tier 1 vaccination, which includes individuals aged 75 and over, as well as other essential workers.
The county reminds all residents that the best way to verify that they are currently eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine is to visit the county’s website at sccfreevax.org.
This is the official source of vaccine-related information in Santa Clara County and includes information on scheduling vaccination appointments if a resident is eligible.
To ensure that they meet the eligibility criteria for vaccination, each person will be asked to provide a verification of their status when they arrive at the vaccination site for their consultation.
Contact Madelyn Reese at [email protected] and follow her @MadelynGReese.