VACCINATION PERTURBATION

 There have certainly been hiccups in the manufacture and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine: that is the availability of the vaccine from the manufacturers, and the distribution to states, counties, clinics, and pharmacies. 

But the biggest hurdle for most ordinary people is making an appointment to receive the vaccine. This process can vary from one county to another and even from one clinic to another. There is no over-all plan, and there are many different populations to be served. 

In general, health-care workers and people confined to nursing home have been first on the list. That has been followed by essential workers and people 65 years old and older, OR 75 years old and over. In our county, the 65+ category was announced first, then changed to 75+, adding another layer of confusion to the local situation. 

We first were told that we could get the vaccination from our health-care provider. But our primary care physician has an independent practice, not affiliated with a big medical center or hospital. She certainly has neither the equipment nor the capacity to offer the vaccine, so she needed to send out a general email directing her patients to other providers. 

We realized that we were patients of several specialists in a large local clinic, and I was fortunate to log onto their website by chance shortly after they begain offering appointments. I told my husband he should also make an appointment, but when he tried two hours later, the website had crashed because the news had spread through the grapevine, and too many people were trying to access the site. We heard from other friends that other clinics in the area had two to three hour holds on their phone lines or were completely overwhelmed.  Somehow, we made an appointment for my husband --- though I'm not sure now how that happened --- and we've both received the first dose of Moderna. At the time we were at the vaccination clinic, we also received appointments for the second dose --- no struggle for that one!

Once we had made an appointment, the actual vaccination experience was efficient. We were directed to the lower level of the clinic parking garage. We first stood in line for about 15 minutes, then checked in at a computer station where our identity was verified and we received cards recording the date, dosage, and batch of vaccine we were getting. There's room on the card for the same information about the second dose. Then we moved on to one of about 11 vaccination stations. Once the vaccine had been injected, we moved to a socially distanced seating area --- folding chairs on the concrete basement floor, arranged in singles and pairs. There was a clock on a table so we could check our fifteen minute waiting time to be sure we didn't have a reaction. Once our time was up, we walked back to our car and drove home. The after-effects of the vaccination were very mild --- just a very slight soreness at the injection spot. 

Since then, I've heard many stories of the problems people are having getting an appointment, and the variety of ways appoitments are being offered. The lottery system seems to be the drill in Denver. Elgible people are selected at random to make an appointment. In one case, the wife (who was younger than her husband), got an appointment for her first dose at a clinic. A few weeks later, her husband received an appointment for a drive-through clinic at the stadium. 

At a veterans' clinic in Houston, my nephew stood in line with his uncle for three and a half hours --- and they were in the first half of the line. This had apparently been advertised as a drop-in clinic with no attempt to stagger the flow of patients. At a drop-in clinic in a low income neighborhood near us, people 65 and over were advised to come at specific time periods depending on the first letter of their last name. That seems like a smoother way to manage a large crowd of people. 

Our county opened community vaccination sites for people who are not patients at one of the big clinics. At first, they warned that people who were eligible to be vaccinated at one of the big clincis were not allowed to use the community sites. But that's been changed so that anyone who works or lives in the county can go to any clinic. I don't know how the appointment process works. 

Now President Biden has announced that he has directed the vaccine be delivered to pharmacies. Our local Walgreen pharmacy is already overcrowded with people filling their normal prescriptions. There's not a lot of space in the store and the staff is over-worked. How are they going to manage a large influx of Covid-19 vaccine seekers? Perhaps only selected pharmacies that can accommodate a vaccination effort will receive the vaccine. Maybe by the time most people have been vaccinated, the powers that be will have figured out a good way to do it.