Overlake Medical Center: Hospital apologizes after inviting donors to sign up for the Covid-19 vaccine

“We are pleased to share that we have 500 new public appointments at the Overlake COVID-19 vaccine clinic,” reads an email from an Overlake Medical Center, which also provides a special access code to register.

Overlake sent the email to about 4,000 members of his community, including volunteers, retired nurses and doctors, all employees and about 100 donors from our foundation database, according to a hospital statement.

On January 22, Washington is in Phase 1B Level 1 of the Covid-19 vaccine distribution, according to the state Department of Health website. This means that all people over the age of 65 and over the age of 50 are eligible in multigenerational households.

Government Jay Inslee expressed concern over the emails during a news conference on Tuesday.

“If they actually prefer a GDP list, that’s not the way to do it,” he said. “It is not acceptable to us. We must give everyone a fair chance at the vaccine.”

Hospital officials said in the statement that they understand that a mistake was made. “We realize that we have made a mistake by including a subgroup of our donors and not a broader outreach strategy to fill these appointments, and we apologize,” the statement said.

The hospital statement noted that people who received the invitations could only report if they were legally eligible to receive the vaccine under current Washington state policies.

“Our intention and commitment has always been to administer every vaccine that has been made available to us safely, appropriately and effectively,” the hospital said.

The hospital’s statement also states that it has administered 11,000 vaccines so far and that it will soon be administering vaccines to more than 40,000 community members who are planning upcoming appointments through our online system.