Clark County residents are still struggling with the online system to make COVID-19 vaccinations at the Clark County Event Center at the Ridgefield Fair.
On Sunday afternoon, a new group of appointments became available online, but dozens of residents said they were kicked out of the appointment portal or experienced the site crash, according to emails and calls received by the Columbian, as well as a Monday briefing presented by Public Health in Clark County.
The forum, which aired on Facebook, was organized to answer residents’ questions about vaccination and where to get vaccinated, but questions about problems with the appointment portal still remain.
The mass vaccination center at the fair is run by the Washington State Department of Health. Safeway / Alberstons, along with the U.S. National Guard, administered the vaccine at the fair.
Clark County Public Health is not involved in the fairgrounds or the appointment portal.
Lauren Jenks, who represented the health department at the forum, said she knew the site had crashed for the first time, but that she was not aware of the recent crash.
“It’s very frustrating,” Jenks said.
Jill McGinnis, director of communications and public affairs at Safeway / Albertsons, said their pharmacy team was not aware of accidents or errors with the appointment portal, but acknowledged that the website was under pressure after appointments were made available.
Safeway / Albertsons does not operate the portal. McGinnis said it is run by a third-party vendor called Coordinator. McGinnis said a Safeway / Albertsons pharmacy team will contact Coordinator to let them know about the problems.
She said Safeway / Albertsons has no plans to stop vaccinating any time soon, stressing that patience will be the key as the number of people currently eligible for vaccination is far greater than the available vaccine supply.
Other vaccination sites planned
Although public health is not involved in the site near Ridgefield, it is still working with an incident management team to prepare the province’s vaccination infrastructure for a larger vaccine supply.
The province plans to have more vaccination staff on a larger scale, in addition to mobile vaccination clinics that people can vaccinate in family homes for adults and also larger essential workplaces such as food processing plants.
At present, it is difficult to exercise these options due to the limited amount of vaccine. Last week, the majority of the country’s vaccines went to the fair. A total of 3,060 vaccines were administered at the fair last week, easily exceeding the state’s target of 500 vaccinations per day.
There are currently factors that limit the country’s ability to administer vaccine. According to Clark County, deputy health officer, dr. Steven Krager, the supply of vaccine is still much lower than the number of people who are eligible for the vaccine.
“There’s just not enough vaccine to go around right now,” Krager said. ‘We’re administering as fast as we can, but we just do not have enough. Hopefully this will change in the future. ”
For this week, the state has requested more than 358,000 vaccine doses from the federal government, which means that Washington’s vaccination clinics, health care providers and pharmacies believe they have the capacity to administer approximately 358,000 vaccine doses this week.
However, the state received only 107,000 vaccine doses from the federal government, leaving it less than the capacity. There are currently about 1.7 million Washingtonians eligible for the vaccine.
Clark County typically receives somewhere near 4,000 doses per week, but the province currently has 50,000 to 75,000 eligible people.
Vaccine supply is expected to increase at least in the near future, which will help some. The state also expects the federal government to soon give notice of the allocation of vaccines for the next three weeks, instead of just the coming week. This will help medical providers plan appointments further in the future.
Krager said more vaccination options will be available as more vaccine supplies become available. Public Health continues to connect people with vaccination health care providers, but they work more than 20,000 through pending vaccination requests.
According to state data, Clark County has so far administered more than 21,000 vaccine doses.
“The good news is that we are getting ready so that we can give a lot of vaccine when it comes to the state,” Jenks said. “The bad news is that we had to disappoint a lot of people this week. . ”