Frustrations grow in state

Limited supply, confusion hurting rollout for residents 70 and older

After getting on every waitlist she could find, Julie Tuohy finally secured an appointment to get the first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine last week.

The 71-year-old has spent almost a year following socialdistancing guidelines, avoiding spending the holidays with her daughter, even shopping for groceries at 7 a.m. to lower her risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, which has sickened hundreds of thousands in Colorado.

“It’s peace of mind and it opens a few more doors where you are not so afraid,” Tuohy said of getting the vaccine, adding, “I have not shared a meal with anyone in nearly a year.”

But when she drove 45 minutes from Denver to a King Soopers store in Thornton for her appointment on Thursday, a pharmacist turned her away. He incorrectly told her it would “break the law” to give the vaccine to a resident of another county, she said.

“And there was no one (else) there,” Tuohy said. “Are they going to waste?”

It’s been almost a month since Coloradans 70 and older became eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, but the patchwork of distribution methods across the state

— hospitals, county health departments, pharmacies at grocery stores — has left some of the most vulnerable residents confused and frustrated by the slow rollout.

While distribution has been led

by states, the logistics of getting shots into people’s arms in Colorado vary county to county, and in some cases, by vaccine provider. There is no statewide waiting list people can join to be inoculated. Much of the process of signing up with different health care providers has occurred online, which can be difficult for older Coloradans who may not be tech-savvy and for those who don’t have internet access.

Tuohy’s situation, with a scheduled appointment being canceled, is another added wrinkle to the vaccine rollout.

Gov. Jared Polis and a spokesperson for Kroger, which owns the King Soopers brand, acknowledged the supermarket chain should not be turning away people who are eligible to receive the vaccine.

Polis said Tuesday that state will send a “stern warning” to providers who’ve reportedly only allowed residents of their counties to get the vaccine. If the problem continues, the state could stop sending doses to those providers, he said.

“I understand there are Coloradans over 70 who are frustrated” by the wait to get a shot, Polis said during a news briefing.

Extremely limited vaccine supply remains one of the largest challenges. About 562,000 people make up the 70-and-older age group that’s receiving vaccine prioritization, but Colorado only expects to receive enough doses to give 76,080 people their first shot this week. The state also expects 49,380 doses to give people their second shots.

So far, 155,888 people 70 and older have received the COVID19 vaccine in Colorado. State officials have said that they are working to ensure equitable distribution of the shots, but data from the health department shows that about 76% of the people receiving the vaccines are white — higher than the group’s proportion of the total Colorado population.

Essential workers and people between the ages of 65 and 69 could learn more about when they can expect to receive the vaccine in the coming days, but the state needs a clear idea of how many doses will be available before expanding the pool of potential recipients, Polis said.

Polis urged Coloradans to be patient as they wait for vaccination appointments.

The state is expecting a 16% increase in supplies from the Biden administration starting next week and during the two subsequent weeks, according to a news release from the governor’s office.

“Still can’t get a vaccination”

The confusion over whether residency is a requirement is just one example of the frustrations people expressed with the state’s rollout. For many, the wait to get the shots, which can take weeks, is too long, so they are signing up for multiple waitlists to see where they can get it first.

“What I’m afraid of — people in my age group — we’re going to die,” said 70-year-old Ernest McSpadden.

McSpadden, a Denver resident, works in construction and has underlying health conditions that place him both at risk of exposure to the disease COVID-19 and at risk of having severe complications. He is on three waitlists — UCHealth, Safeway and SCL Health — and said he checks to see if he has gotten an appointment “23 times a day.”

“Here I am working every single day in that risk category,” he said, adding, “I still can’t get a vaccination. I think some of that has been totally mishandled by passing the baton to the governors of each state.”

The state’s largest health systems and hospitals — which are taking on much of the burden of getting people 70 and older vaccinated — have created online waitlists or have reached out to patients via their online record portals.

It is only in recent days that the state Department of Public Health and Environment has created a COVID-19 vaccine hotline -— 877-268-2926 — and that providers were required to offer phone numbers in addition to their online platforms.

“Very difficult” process

After hearing an announcement on the radio, Norma Jean Degenhart signed up for a waitlist with the Fremont County Department of Public Health and Environment and with her primary care physician.

“What I’m seeing is that it’s just very hard to get in this county,” said Degenhart, who lives in Penrose. “My neighbors have also had the same problem.”

The 80-year-old then called UCHealth and was told she would receive a notification for an appointment through their patient portal, called My Health Connection. But when Degenhart checked the portal she realized she had missed a notification alerting her of an appointment to get the vaccine weeks earlier.

“I don’t look at that every day,” Degenhart said.

Dan Weaver, a spokesperson for UCHealth, said people have 48 hours to respond to a notification from the health system and to set up an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine because the health system is “not letting vaccines sit in freezers or on shelves.”

Eventually, her granddaughter, Angie Anderson, was able to schedule her an appointment at a Safeway in Fountain for Wednesday.