Do you have your Covid-19 vaccine? Now cancel the additional appointments

In North Carolina, a county health director went door-to-door to find people taking lost slots. A Midwest retailer closed its waiting list and instructed employees to eliminate people who had multiple meetings. On social networks, it is increasingly common to see posts from health departments that provide photos to anyone who may appear on a vaccination site.

“It creates a crazy line at the end of the day,” said Raynard Washington, deputy director of health at Mecklenburg County Health Department in North Carolina. 10% of people do not show up at county-administered vaccination sites – or hundreds of doses a week – in part because they do not cancel multiple meetings.

Appointments remain difficult to score in many parts of the country, even as the overall supply of vaccines and the rate of inoculation are improving. Some people make multiple reservations in hopes of getting vaccinated sooner or sometimes because they do not receive or see confirmation emails, according to pharmacies and community vaccination sites. Others receive photos at pop-up vaccination events before appointments and do not notify providers.

The US does not have a concrete system for tracking wasted doses. In general, local and state officials say the demand is high enough that absences do not lead to discarded vaccines, although vaccine providers say they sometimes fail to find administrators for all the doses they thawed in time to get them. use them all safely.

Dr. Washington and his colleagues knocked on doors and entered a local grocery store looking for people who wanted to get vaccinated because of the absences. When his team recently had doses left over from a church vaccination event, they went to a construction site across the street and offered them to workers there.

Mecklenburg County officials are asking residents to cancel additional appointments and simplify the cancellation process on its website earlier this year, Dr. Washington said, adding that they now exceed reservations by about 10 percent or more to ensure that no dose will be wasted.

Pharmacies say that multiple bookings and subsequent absences can slow down the vaccination process, creating more work for their staff. Many have hired and trained employees to administer Covid-19 vaccinations in recent months, devoting several hours of operation to vaccinations and establishing helplines to help clients with questions.

CVS Health Body.

has a set of practices to avoid wasting doses due to absenteeism, the company said. Vaccines are not withdrawn from a vial until patients reach the appointment, and if there are remaining doses, the pharmacy researches patient profiles to find potential consumers. If it fails, the chain provides photos to employees.

The Weis Markets Inc.,

Pharmacy staff must hunt down other store employees or customers to receive photos if people do not show up 15-20 minutes after their appointment, said Jonathan Weis, the company’s chief executive. “There are people who play us,” scheduling appointments to three to four providers, Mr. Weis said. “It’s cruel and evil.”

Although it is difficult to identify exactly the factors behind the failures, pharmacies and some health officials say they are looking through the back-end of appointment lists to get over the problem. Charlie Hartig, executive director of Hartig drug stores in the Midwest, said his chain has temporarily closed its waiting list to remove duplicates and dropped nearly 40 percent of its name after crossing immunization laws.

Waiting lists, however, remain a key way for people to schedule appointments. Lori Wolok Charlton, who lives in Westland, Michigan, has been on several waiting lists, including some retail pharmacies, after being unable to find an offer within an hour or so of home. Last week, he received a phone call from a mass vaccination site in Detroit and received the shot, just in time to return to work at an insurance agency.

A number of people took to social media to complain that they could not cancel their meetings either because they could not reach anyone on the vaccination sites, or because the online programming systems, although reserved, did not permit.

Albertsons Cos. Other retailers also say that their programming systems detect duplicates and ask customers to cancel or not allow multiple meetings under the same email address. However, pharmacy staff will check with customers for other scheduling concerns, such as typos.

“It’s hard to stop or control the enthusiasm of the general public to find the vaccine,” said Lori Raya, SpartanNash Co.

Chief Marketing and Marketing Officer who oversees the pharmacy business. SpartanNash said it was successful in opening time intervals about four days before the vaccine is scheduled because the limited time does not allow much space for people to play with the schedule.

In Detroit, one of the largest vaccination operations in Michigan, severely affected, has seen hundreds of failures since opening last week. About 15% of the booked appointments did not appear in the first days, the site, on a football stadium in the city center, was opened. That day, although the site administered fewer photos than it was capable of, no doses were wasted, state officials said. Organizers have since begun excessive bookings to ensure that as many people as possible are vaccinated.

CVS and Walgreens Boots-Alliance Inc.,

the nation’s largest pharmacies, which together have administered more than 20% of the nation’s vaccine doses, have centralized reservation reservation systems that do not connect with each other or with state and local systems.

Walgreens said the demand for the vaccine is high enough that pharmacies can find providers for missed appointments. The company said scheduling issues should be largely resolved when the vaccine supply is plentiful enough for all 9,000 locations in the chain to be able to manage photos.

Pharmacies and health officials are confused about whether higher eligibility would limit or increase multiple appointments. In Arizona’s Coconino County, which extended eligibility to anyone over the age of 18 about two weeks ago, multiple bookings were a bigger challenge in February, said Kim Musselman, the county’s director of health and human services. . She and her colleagues went on social media and urged residents not to accumulate vaccination schedules.

They also introduced a waiting list for additional doses about three weeks ago and began contacting people on the list earlier in the day.

“We understand the anxiety about getting a vaccination program,” she said.

Corrections and amplifications
Multiple bookings were a major challenge in February in Coconino County, Arizona. An earlier version of this article incorrectly called it Coconico County. (Corrected on April 7)