Waitlist for vaccinations needed here
“Russian roulette.” “Futile.” “Useless.” That’s how some Express-news readers eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine described their efforts to secure an appointment through the Metropolitan Health District. The words “lottery” and “gamble” also came up at last week’s City Council meeting, where San Antonians pressed Metro Health to establish a one-stop registry for vaccine distribution.
This week, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched a pilot project in Dallas and Houston that expands access to vaccines in underserved areas — 10,000 doses per day from three mass distribution sites in those communities — San Antonio remains the last major city in Texas to create a waitlist for COVID-19 vaccines. On Wednesday, San Antonio announced a textmessaging option to notify residents when appointments open at vaccination sites run by Metro Health, University Health and Wellmed — a step in the right direction. However, as Mayor Ron Nirenberg made clear: “This service will not sign you up or add you to a waitlist.”
This adds another layer of confusion to the city’s scheduling system — one that has left frontline workers without vaccines and forced another to call a Wellmed hotline 2,000 times to get an appointment. The city is basically treating vaccines like a 1990s radio station contest: Be the ninth caller for your free tickets. We can’t do better than this?
Metro Health’s website instructs residents to register for a vaccine by completing an online form and then calling 311 to finish the process. However, the form has been unavailable for weeks, and pressing “8” to ask 311 about COVID-19 services sends callers to busy-signal purgatory. Though a waitlist for San Antonio was tabled at last week’s council meeting — where San Antonio’s coronavirus czar, Colleen Bridger, said it wouldn’t help the nervousness of people who can’t get through to 311 — it remains under review by the Community Health and Equity Committee, which hasn’t announced a date for an upcoming discussion.
We don’t understand this rationale. People are frantically calling hotlines and refreshing websites to try to get vaccinated. Why couldn’t they be placed on a waitlist and then notified as appointments become available?
This isn’t impossible. In Austin, Dallas and Houston, waitlists for COVID-19 vaccines began just weeks after Texas got its first shipment in December.
At least 300,000 people have signed up for appointments though Harris County Public Health’s waitlist after it debuted nearly two months ago. Its system immediately issues an email confirming successful registration and eliminates duplicate requests, Martha Marquez, the department’s public information officer, told us. Eligible residents later receive a time and location for a vaccine — a planning opportunity tremendously valuable to the 5 percent of Texas households without a car. In Bexar County, that figure was close to 9 percent before the pandemic.
Another reason for a waitlist? FEMA lists “registration and check-in processes” among its “critical considerations” for vaccine collaborations with local health departments, according to the agency’s Community Vaccination Centers Playbook.
“Local officials utilized their own registration systems or waitlists to identify individuals who were seeking vaccines in their communities,” FEMA said in a statement to the Express-news regarding the Texas pilot project.
The eligible populations for vaccines include essential workers, people with a health condition that would worsen with COVID-19 infection and people over 65. Vaccinating grandparents is uniquely important in Bexar County, where 1 in 20 households are multigenerational. Seniors also make up 25 percent of the nation’s volunteer force — and after Texas experienced a crisis within a crisis with the recent deadly freeze, San Antonio could use all hands on deck.
Health leaders in our community — which many still regard as Military City, USA — should also realize they’re picking up the slack for the Veterans Affairs Department, which gives vaccines only to people 75 or older and who already receive care at the VA.
One adage — a closed mouth doesn’t get fed — perfectly sums up our city’s situation. There is no reason local officials cannot accomplish what other Texas metropolises achieved: an accessible and well-functioning central registry.
Instead, as local COVID-19 deaths surpassed 2,500 this week, Metro Health continues asking appointment-seekers to keep hitting redial.
A top CPS Energy executive, a key architect of the utility’s plan to shift to renewable energy sources, is stepping down after this week.
Chief Operating Officer Cris Eugster, who joined the cityowned utility in 2009, will become president and CEO of North American Energy Services on Monday.
A CPS spokeswoman said Eugster’s exit was “in motion way before” last week’s severe winter storm, which resulted in prolonged power outages in San Antonio and across Texas.
“My heart goes out to our community and to communities across Texas,” Eugster said. “It is very sad to be leaving at this time, but I know San Antonio and CPS Energy will come back even stronger after this event.”
The company that Eugster is set to lead is based in Issaquah, Wash., and it builds and operates power plants and does energy-related business consulting.
NAES is a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Itochu.
“Cris is a transformative leader who will help NAES expand its services, especially in renewables and clean energy solutions,” NAES Chairman Taka Takeuchi said in a
statement.
Eugster led the development of CPS’ Flexpower Bundle, a plan to replace the utility’s aging power plants with solar farms, battery storage and other energy technologies.
The utility solicited bids for the initiative and since Feb. 1 has been evaluating companies’ proposals.
The plan calls for the construction of 900 megawatts of solar power, 50 megawatts of battery storage and 500 megawatts of electricity that’s available whenever demand runs high. Depending on the proposals, that last 500 megawatts of power could be from a cuttingedge source such as hydrogen or other early-stage energy storage technologies.
“It’s not just another solar (power purchase agreement) that we’re trying to do,” Eugster said in November. “The intent is to replace a fossil fuel plant.”
Eugster joined CPS after a two-year stint as chief officer of sustainable growth for the city of Houston. There, Eugster locked in a wind power contract that at the time made Houston the top municipal buyer of renewable power. Eugster also lured Danish company Vestas Wind Systems to establish a research and development center in Houston.
Prior to his time in Houston, Eugster worked at highpowered consulting firm Mckinsey for nearly a decade, advising CEOS at Fortune 100 companies on technology and energy-related issues.
Eugster was a candidate to become CEO of CPS during the utility’s executive search in 2010, before it hired Chicago energy executive Doyle Beneby. After Beneby’s departure in 2015, Eugster was again considered for the top job before CPS’ board hired current CEO Paula Gold-williams.
Still, Eugster, who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has garnered respect inside and outside CPS. Ed Kelley, a CPS trustee, recently described Eugster as “brilliant” and a “great resource.”
Activists in the failed Recall CPS petition drive, which targeted CPS’ governance, have also expressed admiration for Eugster’s clean energy push — even as they’ve called called for Gold-williams and other CPS leaders to resign.
“Cris has been regarded as a positive influence within the utility, as somebody who’s genuinely interested and concerned with the issues of clean energy, conservation and climate,” said Greg Harman, a clean energy organizer at the Sierra Club. “We don’t get that same messaging from Paula Gold-williams, regrettably.”
CPS executives Frank Almaraz and Paul Barham will fill Eugster’s role after his exit, utility officials said.