Trying to schedule an appointment? Try this tip
Getting scheduled for a coronavirus vaccine appointment has proven easier for some than others since the rollout began.
Since the state informed my In-Home Support Services client she was eligible for vaccine on March 15, she has been reaching out to her local doctors at Open Door and St. Joseph Health to see if she could schedule an appointment. She qualifies by being between 16 and 64 with a medical condition that increases her risk of severe COVID-19. The responses from her doctors were pretty similar: Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
It’s frustrating, but she knows there is a limited supply of vaccines in Humboldt County. So we turned to trying to schedule an appointment through local stores that offer the vaccines. We were refreshing the CVS and Safeway scheduling websites as compulsively as journalists on election night waiting for results. Five, 10, 15 times a day we would try to schedule something with no luck. “No appointments are available at this time” became something of a running joke between us.
Then, late last week, we hit on a new plan: Try scheduling in the middle of the night.
And it worked!
At 2 a.m. Friday morning, we found multiple appointments available for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine at the CVS stores in both Arcata and McKinleyville. After some sleepy deliberations, my client decided to pass on the opportunity. She felt that because she is immunocompromised, she wanted to wait for a two-dose vaccine that has a higher efficacy rate than the one-dose Johnson and Johnson shot.
The Centers for Disease Control have frustratingly little guidance on vaccinations for those who are immunocompromised.
“No data are available to establish COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy in these groups,” the CDC’s website states. “However, the currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines are not live vaccines and therefore can be
safely administered to immunocompromised people.”
Early Saturday morning — at 1:48 a.m. — I found an appointment for a two-dose vaccine at Safeway in Eureka. My client is ecstatic. She’ll be getting her shot in a few days. And we’ll see how it goes from there.
While there are obviously no guarantees in our earlymorning scheduling trick, it worked for us. A colleague also had some success scheduling a family member in the early morning hours last week.
Vaccine availability will reportedly expand in the coming weeks as more people are expected to be eligible. By April 15, the state announced last week, all California residents over the age of 16 will be eligible for a shot. Good luck out there.