Tech barrier slowing many trying to sign up for an inoculation.
Getting a vaccine appointment a huge hurdle to hop
The COVID-19 vaccine appointment system for Floridians was not designed with senior citizens in mind.
The vaccine is available to residents 65 and older, but they need a computer and the technical knowhow to snag an appointment. It’s a system that tests even the most tech-savvy. The best advice might be to find a friend who has the patience to keep trying as websites fail and phone lines jam.
Or find volunteers like Delray Beach residents Jonathan Greenwald, 35, and his wife, Jennifer, 33, who say they gained valuable experience making appointments for their own parents. Although they have full-time jobs and two children, they have been matching volunteers with needy seniors through a Facebook group, “South Florida COVID19 Vaccination Info.” They have set up 125 appointments so far.
“It was shocking for us to see our own parents have to drive to different counties to get the vaccine,” Jennifer Greenwald said. “You need to be persistent and you need to refresh the computer constantly. It takes a lot of time and bandwith. These are not things many seniors are familiar with or aware of.”
Many older people who are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in Florida have been enlisting acquaintances and even strangers to help them through the confounding appointment process. The majority likely would have been more comfortable making arrangements by phone, but until recently, there were no appointment centers in Broward or Palm Beach that took old-fashioned phone calls. On Thursday, the state announced seniors in Broward can now call 866-201-6313 to request a slot through a new vaccine scheduling system.
With that exception, hospitals and health departments are otherwise depending on websites, which become swamped with requests within minutes of the announcement of a new vaccine shipment.
Email addresses have also proven ill-equipped to withstand the demand. When Palm Beach County set up an email address for appointments, it became overwhelmed with more than 200,000 requests and shut down.
Those with no one to assist them through the confusion say they feel forsaken.
Irving Brown, 95, and wife Esther, 92, live in a Delray Beach apartment and don’t own a computer. COVID19 has kept them home, alone, for the past 10 months.
“I don’t go out unless I’m putting out the garbage,” Brown said, with the exception of grocery shopping.
“We missed the generation” that uses computers, he said.
The potentially fatal virus worries him, and he’s resigned to a tragic fate if he doesn’t get the shot. “I’m not looking for [age] 100, and I’ve lived a full life, this is what goes on in my mind.”
Philip Winikoff, 90, of Boynton Beach, also lacks a computer. He’s been trying to land an appointment by phone, calling county health departments, AARP, AAA, his doctor, his congressman and his pharmacy.
“I’ve been on the phone for six or seven days,” he said.
The dependence on web-based appointments disenfranchises a substantial segment of senior citizens. A 2017 Pew report showed about a third of Americans age 65 and older say they don’t go online; only 42% said they owned smartphones. Even if they secure an appointment, many older people lack the car needed to get to it and need to hire a driver or find an acquaintance to take them. Lisa Goodman, 60, of Boca Raton, drove her college friend’s mother-in-law, 93, from Boynton Beach to Miami for a vaccine appointment last week, a two-and-a-half hour round trip.
Now she and her sister are spending hours on computers trying to get appointments for their own parents, who are 85 and 86. She is urging the vaccine-frantic to be patient.
“Everybody anticipated the vaccine would roll out more easily,” she said. “The public was under the perception that everything would be available immediately.”
The anxiety of older people desperate to be inoculated is the culmination of hopes raised by the vaccines’ arrival after almost a year of quarantine, said Jeff Johnson, AARP’s Florida director.
“It’s the collision of neither predictable nor sufficient supply and significant demand,” he said. “There’s the urgency and emotion of people putting their lives on hold. They see the opportunity to re-engage in life again.”