⏩ Vaccination pop-ups:
Communityrun programs get shots into seniors’ arms
Bay Area doctors and community groups open sites to speed inoculations for seniors.
Dr. Rebecca Parish, a Lafayette internist, was getting calls from patients in their 70s, 80s and 90s who were stressed out, frustrated and, frankly, frightened that they didn’t know how to get their vaccination against the coronavirus now that it’s starting to become available.
While some clinics and hospitals in California began giving vaccinations to seniors last week, many people spent hours waiting on the telephone or wrestling with crashed or confusing websites, trying frantically to make appointments or find out when they might be able to get shots.
“People were calling me in tears,” Parish said. “This pandemic is the first time, at least in my time, that there’s this scale of vulnerability. People are feeling desperate. They don’t know how to get help. They’re not used to having to push to get basic care, in this case vaccinations, that they can count on.”
Fed up with the creeping pace at which California is getting its oldest residents vaccinated, Parish and others at her independent private practice, Comprehensive Wellness, worked with officials in the LafayetteMoragaOrinda area and community groups to set up a drivethrough clinic in Lafayette that started giving free shots to people over 75 in their cars on Saturday.
More than 100 volunteers — from health care workers to police officers and folks from community organizations — were expected to help ensure that about 250 people on Sunday, in addition to 250 on Saturday, got their shots. The doses came from Contra Costa County’s health department — and if the group can get more, they’ll return next week.
Vaccinations were by appointment only, and only for those over 75 who preregistered. The slots filled quickly after people heard about the program online and by word of mouth. A waiting list bore the names of hundreds of people eager to get vaccinated.
A waiting list of volunteers is nearly as long, Parish said.
“People were desperate to feel they could do something to help and to have a little hope that we can make some progress,” she said.
Those who registered were given
appointments scheduled every halfhour between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. They were checked in and lined up and directed in their cars to eight vaccination stations, where they rolled their windows down and sleeves up and were given their shots of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine. Then the small convoy of cars headed to an area where they rested and were watched for 30 minutes to make sure there weren’t any allergic reactions.
Wayne Hahn, 79, of Lafayette, said he “he felt a little prick when I got the shot but now I feel great.” But it felt even better knowing that he’s had the first of two doses of the vaccine — and is now better protected against the coronavirus.
“I am definitely more relaxed than I was before,” he said, minutes after getting poked with a needle.
Ron Judson, 75, of Lafayette, said he had already managed, with some technical difficulties, to schedule appointments for himself and his wife next week in San Pablo through the county health department when he learned of the local popup clinic at Stanley Middle School in central Lafayette.
“It’s a dream come true to have it all so organized and not to have to go through the county or a hospital and jump through all those hoops to get signed up,” he said. “I wish everyone could get a communitytype (clinic) like this. It makes it so much easier.”
Parish shares that wish, and said she hopes the Lafayette setup can serve as a model or at least offer encouragement to other communities that are struggling to get their most vulnerable populations vaccinated.
“There’s no reason it can’t be replicated elsewhere,” she said.
The biggest challenge, Parish said, was not finding people certified to give vaccinations or volunteers to help direct traffic and handle logistics, but obtaining the vaccines. She credited the Contra Costa County health department with coming through with 500 vaccines and the promise of 500 more when those vaccinated over the weekend need their second doses in three weeks.
Other community groups are also heading the popup route and not waiting for counties or medical systems. In the Napa Valley, the St. Helena Hospital Foundation switched from operating a mobile coronavirus testing van last week to running a vaccination clinic at Napa Valley College. In four days, 2,006 people, referred by their doctors or via an online posting to Nextdoor, received vaccinations, said Joe Schoendorf, a volunteer with the foundation who helped organize the event.
“Our goal is simple,” he said — “to get as many vaccinations into as many people as possible.”
The foundation pays medical professionals to give the vaccinations and covers the program through donations, many of them from valley wineries, he said. It uses volunteers to help run the clinic. It will be back in operation on Monday, he said, and hopes to continue for the rest of the week as well.
“The outpouring has been wonderful,” he said. “We’re going to keep it going as long as we can get the vaccine.”
Schoenfeld also believes in the community model, saying it makes it easier to cut through the bureaucracy.
“It may be the way the vaccination program finally gets into gear,” he said.
Dr. Denise Hilliard, who helped organize the Lafayette clinic, said community efforts have an important side effect.
“With everything that’s going on in our country, it’s great to see a thing like this going on,” she said. “It gives you hope, right?”