Miami Herald (Sunday)

Lucky few hit jackpot for COVID-19 vaccine

- BY BERNARD CONDON, CANDICE CHOI AND MATT SEDENSKY Associated Press

Fortune struck one man in the bakery aisle at the supermarke­t. Two others were working the night shift at a Subway sandwich shop. Yet another was plucked from a list of 15,000 hopefuls.

With millions of Americans waiting for their chance to get the coronaviru­s vaccine, a lucky few are getting bumped to the front of the line as clinics scramble to get rid of extra, perishable doses at the end of the day.

It is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes people who just happen to be near a clinic at closing time are offered leftover shots that would otherwise be thrown away. Sometimes health workers go out looking for recipients. Some places keep waiting lists and draw names at random. Such opportunit­ies may be becoming more prized as shortages around the U.S. lead some places to cancel vaccinatio­ns.

“One of the nurses said I should go buy a lottery ticket right now,” said Jesse Robinson, outside a Nashville, Tennessee, clinic this week where the 22-year-old was picked from a 15,000name list for a shot. “I’m not going to question it too much. Just glad it was me.”

David MacMillan was grabbing ingredient­s for a coconut chickpea dish at a Giant grocery store in Washington when a woman in a lab coat from the in-store pharmacy came up to him and his friend.

“I got two doses of the Moderna vaccine. The pharmacy is closing in 10 minutes. Do you want them?” MacMillan, 31, recalled the woman saying. “I thought, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

After MacMillan posted a video of his experience on TikTok, the supermarke­t chain was inundated for days with calls and people hanging around, hoping to score a shot.

It has become one of the most unusual quirks in the often uneven, monthlong rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Once a vial is thawed from the deep freeze and, even more so, once its seal is punctured and the first dose is drawn, those administer­ing the vaccine are in a race to use it up before it spoils — even if it means giving shots to those who don’t fit into the priority list.

While it may be unsettling to see a 20-something getting a shot while a 90year-old woman in a nursing home is still waiting, public health experts say getting a dose into someone’s arm, anyone’s arm, is better than throwing it away.

“As far as I’m concerned, vaccinate anyone but the dog,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University.

Hair colorist Hanna Widger was tipped off by a client about Los Angeles clinics where she might be able to get a leftover dose at the end of the day.

“It almost felt very secretive and undercover,” she said. “Almost like this shady drug deal.”

She said she started crying when she received her shot: “It was almost like you’ve been running this marathon since March and you just finished the race. It was pretty emotional.”

In New York, a rumor that the Brooklyn Army Terminal had extra doses triggered a rush to the vaccine distributi­on site, leading to bumper-bumper traffic in the streets and a line of hundreds on the sidewalks until police came out to say they had been duped.

Mike Schotte, 53, and his 72-year-old mother started showing up at pharmacies near their home in Hurst, Texas, in hopes of getting a leftover shot. Eventually they put their names on a waiting list and got a call saying shots might be available if they arrived within a half-hour.

“We didn’t have to speed, but it was pretty close,” Schotte said. “I’m excited that I got it.”

Nashville started its lottery system to avoid more haphazard ways of distributi­ng leftover shots. In one case last month, the city’s health department ended up giving extra doses to two workers at a Subway restaurant in a nearby hospital so they wouldn’t go to waste.

However they get it, those who’ve lucked into getting a first shot are reserved a spot for a second one a few weeks later.

 ?? SETH WENIG AP ?? People wait in line for the COVID-19 vaccine in Paterson, N.J., on Thursday. The first people arrived around 2:30 a.m. for the chance to be vaccinated at one of the few sites that does not require an appointmen­t.
SETH WENIG AP People wait in line for the COVID-19 vaccine in Paterson, N.J., on Thursday. The first people arrived around 2:30 a.m. for the chance to be vaccinated at one of the few sites that does not require an appointmen­t.

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