Some CVS locations in New Jersey began to make appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday morning, and vacancies for those appointments were filled in just a few hours.
News 12 New Jersey spoke to a couple from Somerset County who even lost their spot while trying to discover the system. Frank Katusa of Franklin Township says he has been trying for weeks to get appointments for him and his wife.
“We applied for Robert Wood Johnson, we applied for Meridian Health, we applied for Atlantic City,” says Katusa.
He says he was hopeful when CVS started making appointments. He got his, but had a problem trying to make an appointment with his wife.
“In maybe 10 minutes, I get a notice that I have an appointment for her … so I clicked for the second appointment and he says ‘We have no vacancies,’ – vaccinations for the second appointment and find another area. So, I tried something very remote, which was less populated, which was Villas, New Jersey, ”says Katusa.
But he said there was no appointment when he went to schedule the second dose in Cape May County. And he says that after 30 minutes of trying to find another CVS location in the state, the system timed out and the entire appointment – including the first dose – was canceled.
“It’s like they get their hopes up and then think, oh no, so you start over and try every zip code, every city that’s on the list,” he says.
CVS says that 25,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been sent to New Jersey, which means that 25,000 consultations have been scheduled for Thursday morning. The injections will be administered starting on Friday morning. More commitments will be made available in the future.
“As vaccine shipments are received by the store, this is where the next appointment allocation or consultation quota will open on the website,” says Christina Cacchili, of the CVS COVID Task Force. “I would say just to check frequently and each week we will receive an additional allocation, so that we can open more consultations.
Rite Aid will also begin administering vaccines in New Jersey. Pharmacy representatives say the scheduling website is not yet active.