Why update your vaccine preregistration?
Following centralized inoculation efforts, state officials are verfying information
If you’re waiting on a vaccine in Virginia, you may have gotten a message recently from the Virginia Department of Health:
“Verify & Update Your COVID19
Vaccine Pre-Registration Now.” Why?
State health officials say they are trying to make sure they have all of the right information after the inoculation effort that started across dozens of individual agencies has been centralized.
The central system, Vaccinate Virginia, launched about a month ago and not only accepted new preregistrations but also merged others that had previously been filled out at the local level.
Officials had to integrate more than a million records into the system, Vaccinate Virginia spokesperson Dena Potter said in an email Tuesday.
“They were brought over from health districts that were asking a wide array of different questions,” Potter wrote. “So someone in one area of the commonwealth may have been asked their date of birth, but someone in another health district was not.”
The state now wants everyone in the system to run through their information and make sure every
thing listed is answered, and correctly.
If the form you originally filled out didn’t ask about certain qualifying aspects like occupation or age, for example, updating it now could make you eligible for a shot sooner, Potter said.
One change in the system this week took some people by surprise: how one’s body mass index, or BMI, factors into the vaccine rollout.
When Vaccinate Virginia launched, all medical conditions that could put people at an increased risk of severe illness from the coronavirus, including asthma, pregnancy, cancer and being overweight, were listed together. (A BMI between 25 and 30 is considered overweight, and above 30 obese.)
The updated system still lists all those conditions, but they are now separated by those that “are” at increased risk versus those that “might be.” Obesity falls in the former category, while overweight’s in the latter. That’s in line with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If vaccines had continued to be in short supply, Potter said officials would have “more closely prioritized” how people under 65 fell within that group of underlying conditions.
Luckily shots are picking up in Virginia, with a fresh influx of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine and more of all three approved vaccines on the way.
Therefore, an overweight BMI or any of the other lesser-risk medical conditions still currently puts registrants in Phase 1b. Officials hope to vaccinate everyone in that group by mid-April,
Potter said.
Virginia has given out nearly 2.8 million vaccine doses so far, not counting those that come from the federal government, such as the military. The state is currently in Phases 1a and 1b of the vaccination campaign.
When it is your turn for a vaccination, you will receive an email, phone call or text message from your local health department or a partner provider — such as a hospital, doctor or pharmacy — with information about scheduling an appointment.
You can pre-register for a vaccine, check whether you’re on the list and update your information at vaccinate.virginia.gov or by calling 1-877-829-4682 (VAX-IN-VA).