MIAMI – After a week and a half of checking voicemails, emails and hospital websites, Harvey Rogers hopes he and his wife are somewhere on a waiting list for a Covid-19 vaccine.
But the 75-year-old lawyer and resident of Pinecrest, a luxury neighborhood in Miami-Dade County, is not really sure because no one has responded.
Rogers, who has diabetes and high blood pressure, said it was frustrating.
“You feel like the government is not telling you the truth,” Rogers said, adding that if the state and federal governments were more determined about when and where the vaccine would be available, there would be less feeling of anxiety and being left out. word. of the loop. ”
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In the two weeks since the governor of Florida said the Covid-19 vaccine would be available to residents 65 and older, the vaccination registration process has not been direct across the counties, causing chaos, confusion and disappointment among its senior population and their family members.
The registration process was diverse and inconsistent: websites crashed; hospital telephone lines are fixed; and scams have convinced people to pay for non-existent vaccination slots. In some places, elderly people camped overnight in hopes of receiving a vaccine.
Florida, with a population of over 21 million, has had the third highest number of Covid-19 cases in the United States in the last 7 days, just after California and Texas. It ranks sixth in deaths.
Florida last week exacerbated the first case of the more contagious coronavirus strain known as B.1.1.7, which was first found in the UK.
With that in mind, it became a race against the clock for many older Floridians to be vaccinated.
Part of the confusion is that the state has never developed a consistent strategy for its 67 provinces to implement a vaccination program. While in some provinces vaccines have been allocated to public hospitals for distribution, other provinces rely on their health department to compile vaccines through the Eventbrite ticket app.
Although several provinces have successfully used Eventbrite to plan appointments, this has led to scams in others. In Port Richey, north of Tampa, some people who showed up at a Covid-19 vaccination clinic in recent days and thought they were making appointments found out that their names were not in the books, Melissa Watts said. a Florida spokesman said. Department of Health.
Although the vaccinations are free, “people also said they were charged a fee to register,” Watts said in an email. “After further investigation, we realized that a fake Eventbrite account was being used to defraud people of their money.”
It was not immediately clear how many people were affected, but health officials said they were referring the complaints to state and local law enforcement for possible investigation. Two provinces, Pasco and Pinellas, have issued warnings to the public.
‘Someone created a FAKE Eventbrite account to register for the COVID-19 vaccination. There is NO need to register for you. Registration is FREE, ”the provinces said in identical tweets.
An Eventbrite spokesman said the company was ‘actively investigating how our platform could best support vaccine access efforts’, but warned users to verify the legality of any pages.
“We recommend that anyone registering for any COVID-19 related events ask questions of their local health service officials,” the spokesman said.
Some provinces said Eventbrite works well for its residents because it is easy to use. In Seminole County, people used Eventbrite to pick up 2,500 vaccinations within 30 minutes of being deployed Tuesday morning, said Andy Wontor, a provincial spokesman. People who have subscribed to the country’s emergency text messages will receive an SMS with a link when appointments are available.
In Daytona Beach and Lee County in southwest Florida, thousands of seniors camped in long lines overnight after their county health departments announced they would distribute vaccines on a first-come, first-served basis.
In Miami-Dade, the population part of the state with the most Covid-19 infections, Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach was until Tuesday the only institution that administered vaccines to the public. According to John Hopkins University and Medicine, Miami-Dade is fourth in the country for confirmed cases.
Mount Sinai has been flooded with phone calls and, according to hospital chief and president Steven Sonenreich, plans about a thousand appointments a day.
“There’s a huge demand to be vaccinated,” Sonenreich said.
Some hospitals and health departments have been criticized for requiring appointments to be scheduled exclusively online because some seniors are less Internet-friendly and have difficulty using a computer or smartphone.
“We took every aspect of this into account to try to make things as simple as possible,” Sonenreich said.
The public hospital in Miami, Jackson Health System, built an online platform on Tuesday morning to plan vaccinations. It went into effect at least two hours earlier than the hospital announced, and in less than two hours the 12,000 slots were filled, leaving many people angry because they could not make an appointment. A hospital spokesman said they would continue to open slots when more vaccines are available.
Broward County, with the second highest number of Covid-19 cases in the state, launched a reporting website for their drive-through vaccination system last week, but it crashed hours after it was put into use due to overwhelming demand. The site has been removed for maintenance. Shortly after it was re-launched on Monday morning, the province’s health department announced that its 26,465 slots had been filled.
But on Tuesday, the country reported another problem. “Due to a schedule, more appointments were given than could be served within a day,” he said in a tweet, announced that some people had to reschedule.
Broward Health, the province’s public hospital, has also experienced technical problems with its hotline due to the number of calls. They announced the next day that they were fully booked until February.
Governor Ron DeSantis held two news conferences in Central Florida and Miami on Monday, putting hospitals under pressure to vaccinate people as quickly as possible and operate seven days a week.
He said hospitals have the infrastructure and staff to get people vaccinated quickly. He also warned that “hospitals that do not do the vaccine well will have their grants transferred to hospitals that work well to get the vaccine out.”
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The State Department of Emergency Management is working with the Department of Health to identify state-run Covid-19 test sites that can be converted into vaccination sites. The number of websites that open will depend on the number of vaccinations the state receives weekly.
The state is also identifying places in the underserved communities where vaccines can be administered.
DeSantis said the state expects to receive 50 percent more vaccines in January than in December. At present, 80 percent of the vaccine doses have already been distributed in hospitals.
“I’m not going to say there were any problems, but I think the distribution in general probably went better than would reasonably be expected,” DeSantis said.
Carmen Sesin reports from Miami. David Ingram reports from San Francisco.