Despite progress, however, getting vaccination appointments has been a major frustration for many people. The available times are filled in a few minutes. States, local health departments and pharmacy chains have their own registration sites that, in many cases, do not share data with each other. The CDC has its own vaccine administration management system, or VAMS, that some states are using to get people to register for vaccinations and to collect essential data, but state officials have complained that it is clumsy.
Exasperated people solved the problem with their own hands, creating online navigation tools and groups of “vaccine hunters” on Facebook in cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans to help connect people with available doses.
When the VaccineFinder portal goes live this week, it will include some drugstores and grocery stores across the country, as well as many other locations, such as mass vaccination sites in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency was encouraging vaccination sites to “provide accurate and up-to-date information on vaccine locations, times and availability, so that Americans can find vaccination sites more easily.”
Dr. Marcus Plescia, medical director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, said: “I think people are optimistic and look forward to it.” He continued: “As with anything we launch in the middle of this pandemic, if there are failures, it can end up creating a lot of confusion, but I think we will have to resolve this.”
Finding the doses was relatively simple in the first few weeks of the vaccine’s launch, when eligible people – health professionals and residents and staff at long-term care facilities – were being vaccinated mainly where they lived or worked.
But states have since expanded their eligibility criteria to include older people, people with certain medical conditions and certain frontline workers. More sites have also been added to distribute vaccines, including stadiums and local pharmacies.