Health opens ‘VacuCenter’ to advance COVID-19 vaccine registry on the island

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The Department of Health, along with the Puerto Rico Office of Innovation and Technology Service (PRITS), on Monday inaugurated VacuCenter, a center dedicated to manually entering data on people vaccinated against COVID-19 on the island and providing information to Control Centers. and Disease Prevention (CDC).

“The intention is to work with vaccine providers to enter data from vaccinated registries to reduce the numerical gap between the number of vaccines received, administered and registered.”said Governor Pedro Pierluisi, during a press conference at the Convention Center, where “VacuCenter” will be located.

According to the CDC database, Puerto Rico received 1,439,970 vaccines, of which 748,875 were administered, placing Puerto Rico as one of the US jurisdictions with the lowest vaccination rate. But Salud argued that, in reality, this number is higher and that the difference between the intervals is due to a significant delay in entering the data provided by vaccinated people, a process that is manual.

Appointed Health Secretary Carlos Mellado also said that in addition to the approximately 150 suppliers who have agreements with the COVID-19 vaccine agency on the island, there are other entities that receive doses of medicines from Direct through a contract with the government, such as Walgreens and CVS pharmacies, about 70 community pharmacies, Costco, Walmart and the federal prison, entities responsible for recording the data corresponding to vaccinators.

Currently, about 100,000 weekly doses arrive on the island, of which 80,000 are distributed by Health. “As part of our efforts, we are talking to each provider so that they can enter all the data quickly.” Mellado pointed out.

“VacuCenter” mainly received documents for the registration of people vaccinated in mass events, such as those carried out by the VOCES Vaccination Coalition and the National Guard. The center employs about 250 people and aims to reach 300. The total cost of the project, said Enrique Völckers Nin, director of PRITS, is about $ 700,000.

“The goal is to be able to enter 10,000 records daily. By the end of the week, we will reduce the difference quite a bit, ”said Völckers Nin, while saying that the ultimate goal is to digitize the entire data entry process for those vaccinated.

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