SANDY – Due to a huge blunder over the weekend, Utah has not vaccinated nearly as many people as possible on Monday – one of many consequences in the real world.
Over the weekend, it spread like wildfire that Utah has too many vaccines and that eligibility is open and anyone who wants to sign up could. And 7,200 relatively young and healthy people thought they were doing the right thing when they signed up for vaccination meetings.
Apparently it was just a rumor aggravated by an error on the state’s website, where people can set up a meeting. When the dust cleared, it meant that the 7,200 meetings had to be canceled. Some of these slots were for Monday and no one else re-registered them, said Gabe Moreno, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County Department of Health.
“It is very unfortunate that we still have many public health nurses who are ready to start providing these photos, but we do not have people to complete them,” Moreno said.
I asked Moreno if a day with many empty seats at vaccination sites, when there is a huge demand for Utahns ready for shooting, shows a faulty system.
“That would be a question for the state,” he said. “We follow the details of the state guidelines to vaccinate certain priority groups and move on to those (groups) based on the state guidelines.”
I reached the office of Governor Spencer J. Cox and asked if the number of unused appointments was a sign that the state should extend eligibility to more people.
“The answer is not yet,” spokeswoman Jennifer Napier-Pearce said in a statement. “So far, only 41% of these children between the ages of 65 and 69 have received at least one dose. (Seventy) + is 74% with at least one dose.”
And, although she did not have the number available at Utahns aged 16 and over, with serious health conditions, she said that “it has only been in force for four days, so the percentage is probably low.
Low, just like the number of seats filled Monday inside the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy, a place that is usually one of the busiest vaccination sites in Utah.
“We have fewer appointments that are full,” said Lee Cherie Booth, the site’s health supervisor for the Salt Lake County Department of Health.
Asked if there was a lot of waste on Monday, she said: “Yes, today, potentially. But that doesn’t reflect what we normally do.”
If there is only one silver line in the weekend blunder with the online registration site, it is very good that the lost day is not added to the wasted vaccines.
“If we don’t use all the vaccine we brought to the site today, we can take it back to the fridge and it can stay in the fridge for up to five days,” she said.
Nicholas Rupp, along with the Salt Lake County Department of Health, has further developed what happens to unused doses.
“Once thawed, the Pfizer vaccine must be used within five days and Moderna within 30 days, so we have plenty of opportunities to use the vaccine for any non-presentation,” he said in a statement. “The vaccine remains in the refrigerator until the dose is received on site, so the waste is minimal to non-existent. In extremely rare cases, we have an extra dose in a vial at the end of the day, vaccinate a staff member or have been vaccinated. “
I also asked Rupp about a screenshot of the state’s vaccination program, made Monday at 11 a.m., showing a lot of available time intervals – some within minutes of the screenshot – that are not completed.
This photo was taken just after 11:00 today. Look at all those available appointments that remain unused. We learned that each of these time intervals could be up to 50 years old. Coming on @ KSL5TV News at 17:00 and 18:00, why waste and what happens to the vaccine when no drugs are made? pic.twitter.com/mMOFxB3IkK
– Matt Gephardt KSL (@KslMatt) March 1, 2021
“Each meeting slot can hold 30-50 people depending on location, so when you see a slot available as in the screenshot, there could be 49 people reserved with one available,” he replied.
“We may be a little frustrated, as a community, that maybe we stayed a day ago to get things back to normal,” Matt Gephardt of KSL Booth asked back at the Expo Center. “But aren’t we necessarily frustrated because we put a bunch of vaccine in the toilet?”
“Okay. We’re not wasting the vaccine at all,” Booth said. “It could be half a day or a day today when we haven’t met all our appointments.”