Some Marin County residents are abusing access codes intended for people living in black and Latino communities to discuss vaccinations at the Oakland Coliseum through the state’s My Turn vaccination system, SFGATE has learned.
A source, who gave anonymity according to Hearst’s ethics policy, said the codes were widely circulated amid people in Marin discussing appointments at the Oakland Coliseum, although they were not eligible. He said he booked a vaccination appointment at the Coliseum using a code sent via SMS to several people. The text message reads that there are extra vaccines in Oakland where appointments are opening up for anyone to receive these doses. The message advised recipients to go to myturn.ca.gov immediately and enter a code.
The source said he later canceled the appointment when the Los Angeles Times broke a story Monday in which it was reported that affluent residents of Southern California accidentally play the My Turn system and use the same tactics with access codes sent via text message messages are distributed to get appointments at California State University. Los Angeles. He said he realized the information available from the text about extra vaccines was false.
The codes are part of a California program to address vaccine distribution inequalities and are provided to community organizations to distribute to vulnerable communities for the appointment of vaccines at the Cal Entity Los Angeles and the Oakland Coliseum Mass Vaccine Sites . Both of these sites are part of a state-federal partnership to distribute the vaccine and are designed to reach vulnerable communities.
ABC News Reporter Liz Kreutz shared the LA Times story on Twitter and said she could also confirm that the codes are being shared in the Bay. “A woman in Mill Valley showed me the appointment at the Oakland Coliseum after friends gave her the code,” Kreutz said. wrote.
Residents of other provinces in the Bay Area may also abuse these codes, but the cases that SFGATE learned of were specifically in Marin.
“We have set aside a number of vaccines per day for local community organizations that can serve non-English speakers, the elderly … any number of people who may need a vaccine but who may not have access via an online system,” says Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which manages the distribution of vaccines in Cal State LA and the Coliseum. “Each group is assigned a group of appointments. The individual community organizations can have 50 or 100 slots and there is an access code to access these appointments on the My Turn website. We have seen that some of these groups have the codes “and then the members send them to the wider public.”
Ferguson said the state is aware that the codes are being misused and that daily audits are underway to detect the problem and prevent it from occurring.
“When we find out it’s happening, we cancel the appointments,” Ferguson said. “It happened in several cases.”
He said people with the appointment of vaccines are not asked to be eligible for their documentation at the Coliseum site.
“One of the reasons we do this is because the communities we serve understand that there may be people who have different immigration status and that we want to be careful not to scare or intimidate our people,” he said. Ferguson said. and added that those who sign up for an appointment on My Turn fill out a form of government and that it is illegal to falsify information. “If you fill it out in a false way, there could be consequences.”
While dr. Matt Willis, Marin County health director, could not comment on specific examples of residents in his country abusing access codes, he is not surprised that this is happening.
“It’s going to be an ongoing challenge to keep access to the vaccine for our most marginalized residents,” Willis said. “The same factors that put people at higher risk for COVID-19 infections have also harmed it if they have access to vaccines. It tends to have a lower income and on the other side of the digital divide. The “The process of registering vaccines is a technical one, and it corresponds to actual visits to a vaccine clinic. It’s difficult to find ways to protect access with that mechanism. It’s just the latest version of a series of similar episodes.”
Willis said the country vaccinated health workers in December and distributed a link for people to plan appointments themselves.
“The link found its way to a social media site and eventually separated it from all the other context,” Willis said. ‘Suddenly the public saw this link and some lucky people, before it was filled almost immediately, were able to register for visits. Fortunately, they have their contact information when they sign up for an appointment. We could reach out and say, ‘Hello, this was for another group. Please cancel your appointment. ‘ ‘
Willis said 1,200 appointments in this situation were canceled and that health workers finally got the slots.
“It all stems from the scarcity,” he said. “You do not have to do the gate guarding if everyone is vaccinated in a short time.”