Some Orange County residents have been complaining for weeks about problems with the new COVID-19 vaccination program, Othena, and the province’s vaccination program – and it seems that their concerns have now reached the highest levels.
Land supervisors said they had heard from voters about problems planning appointments, a lack of language choices other than English and that they could not find a live person to answer the hotline to help users through their problems with the app not.
Don Wagner, third district superintendent, said at a meeting on Tuesday, January 26, that Othena ‘sucks’, and despite doubts he uses it in a public forum, he’s not sure there’s a better word is what I can use. ‘
In emails to reporters and in social media posts, prospective users of the app and the related website described errors while trying to register or set up a vaccination appointment, while the errors are mistakenly given to people who have not yet have no vaccination, and the inability to get help from a hotline the province has set up for it.
Several executives at Composite Apps, the Irvine company that paid $ 1.2 million to develop and manage Othena for the province, could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Provincial officials pointed out that although the app was experiencing problems, thousands of people were able to make appointments and be vaccinated at the country’s two large-scale sites, at Disneyland in Anaheim and Aloka Sie University’s Soka University. They encouraged patience because the supply of vaccine doses in Orange County is far behind the demand, causing people frustration.
Last week ended Sunday, January 24, public vaccination centers and health care providers delivered about 10,000 shots a day, an improvement over the previous week, according to the latest data from the OC Health Care Agency each day. Overall, 148,000 Orange County residents and workers have received one or both doses since vaccination began with mid-December health care staff.
On Tuesday, OC health officer, dr. Clayton Chau, pointing to the widespread use of Othena – nearly half a million people have tried it – and said that some may be frustrated because the registration through the app can not guarantee users an appointment.
He also said that the app serves several purposes (to register people, make appointments for first and second doses and send data to the state), and he attributes the problems to appointments being limited by scarce stock of vaccine.
Asked why foreign language options were not included from the start, Chau said the goal was to ensure the app runs smoothly before translating the information to prevent it from being corrected in multiple languages.
Andrew Do, first chairman of the board of supervisors, said some people who could not use the app tried the hotline and never got an answer, or that no one was available who could speak their language.
“People understand that there is little supply,” Do said. “I think these are the challenges that for the average person it’s like it’s an issue that should have been considered immediately when designing a system, and not 30 days in the process and still struggling with it.”
Chau said corrections are coming: Spanish and Vietnamese options may be available by the end of this week, and Korean and Mandarin will follow soon; the eight-person line for the province’s vaccine hotline will be beefed up to 20 people, and the hotline hours could be extended to evening.
As the province works on its app, the state has announced that they are testing My Turn, a web tool that allows people nationwide to finally see if they are eligible for a coronavirus scan and be notified when it’s their turn. The site will also provide medical providers and public health officials with a streamlined way to quickly report the administration of doses, on which the state relies to inform decisions on which groups to focus on next.
The tool is part of a broader push by state health leaders to better organize California’s broken vaccine management, which includes public and private health systems, pharmacies, hospitals, community clinics and pop-up and mobile sites.
‘We want to make sure that the administration of vaccine does not slow down, except the rate at which the vaccine arrives in the state, and we are going to do that by balancing safety, speed and fairness while increasing to reach the level of vaccine. needed in the state, ”Yolanda Richardson, Secretary of State for Government Operations, said at a Tuesday news conference.
Only health workers and people 65 and older in Los Angeles and San Diego can immediately book appointments during this launch, but the program is expected to expand to all state residents in the coming weeks, Richardson said.
Orange County officials questioned Chau about My Turn, which Gavin Newsom first announced Monday, but it was not immediately clear how the state yard would work with Othena, or whether non-vaccinated residents would be encouraged to use one or the other, or both tools.
“I believe the state will have a discussion with us on how we can integrate the two systems,” Chau said.
He also noted that the province’s health agency receives approximately 20% of the vaccine doses allocated to Orange County; the rest goes to hospitals and health providers – but the state recently authorized local health officials to redistribute doses from private providers who could not use them on time.