Canceled vaccine appointments set to be rescheduled

Maui Health contacting about 5,000 people on the hospital’s waitlist

Maui Health is beginning to contact about 5,000 people whose vaccination appointments got canceled at the hospital’s vaccine clinic due to the lack of supply.

“We are reaching out to those people directly. If you are one of those people, you should be getting an email from us in the next two weeks on how you can reach back to us to get set up for an appointment,” said Dr. Michael Shea, chief medical director of Maui Health, which operates Maui Memorial Medical Center.

Maui Memorial is not doing the rescheduled appointments via the online Vaccination Administration Management System, also known as VAMS, since they are still not open to the general public, Shea said during a county news conference Wednesday afternoon.

“We are going to make sure those that had appointments get taken care of first,” he added.

A couple hundred of those firstshot appointments will be done this week, he said. But second doses are also being completed this week.

Maui Health currently has a waiting list of about 14,000 people who have completed initial registration steps but have not yet been able to schedule their first appointment. Some are also having technical difficulties that the hospital is addressing through its appointment-only help desk. Seabury Hall students also are helping some kupuna navigate the online systems for the vaccine. Shea said that the students have already helped about 25 kupuna.

The island’s other main vaccination clinic at the University of Hawaii Maui College, which is run by the state Department of Health’s Maui District Health Office, is finishing up second shots this week and next.

Maui District Health Officer Dr. Lorrin Pang said at the news conference that he doesn’t see the clinic being opened up again for first shots until possibly the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine is approved for use. He estimated this could be at the end of the month or early March.

For now, Pang said his staff and others will be going out to people in congregate home settings which have vulnerable residents who would need hospital care if they contracted COVID-19.

Pang’s office is also working with various clinics around the island to provide shots, but at limited numbers, since supply is low.

The clinic at the college will also continue to be open to those with appointments only. DOH officials said this week that vaccinations at the college will continue to include health care workers who have not yet been vaccinated as part of Phase 1a and frontline essential workers in Phase 1b whose names were submitted by organizations that completed the online survey or contacted the Department of Health directly.

The DOH is not taking appointments via the VAMS online site, officials have said.

Dr. Tarquin Collis, an infectious

disease expert from Kaiser Permanente, also said during the news conference that residents should continue following good hygiene practices as variants emerge in other countries and states.

The B.1.1.7 variant that was first discovered in the United Kingdom and recently found in two cases on Oahu has not been reported in Maui yet, but Collis noted that the two Oahu cases did not travel, so “they clearly acquired this locally.”

“It’s definitely not the end of the world,” he said of the variants. “This is what pandemics do, they evolve over time.”

He said that hand-washing, distancing and avoiding crowded spaces are still key even with the more transmissible U.K. variant.

Getting a vaccine is also important, Collis said, noting that the approved vaccines now offer similar protection for the U.K. variant, though scientists are concerned about how much of a defense they have against the South Africa B.1.351 and Brazil P.1 variants that are currently found in some U.S. states, though not in Hawaii.

But Collis said in any event, the vaccines “will prevent you from getting very sick or dying.”

He added that vaccine boosters are being developed that could help tackle the variants.