Despite the progress, it has been a source of great frustration for many people to get appointments for vaccinations. Appointments are filled within minutes of becoming available. States, local health departments and pharmacy chains have their own sign-up websites that in many cases don’t share data with each other. The CDC has its own vaccine administration management system, or VAMS, that some states use to register people for vaccinations and collect vital data, but government officials have complained it’s clumsy.
Irritated people have taken matters into their own hands by creating online navigation tools and Facebook ‘vaccine hunter’ groups in cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans to connect people with available doses.
When the VaccineFinder portal goes live this week, it will feature some drugstores and grocery stores across the country, plus many other locations, such as mass vaccination sites, in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency encouraged vaccination sites to “provide accurate and up-to-date information about vaccine location, hours, and availability so that Americans can more easily find vaccine sites.”
Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said, “I think people are optimistic and eagerly awaiting it.” He continued, “As with everything that we’re rolling out in the midst of this pandemic, if there are outages it can cause a lot of confusion, but I think we just have to work through it.”
Finding doses was relatively easy in the first weeks of the vaccine’s introduction, when eligible people – health workers and residents and staff in long-term care facilities – were vaccinated, primarily where they lived or worked.
But states have since expanded their eligibility criteria to the elderly, those with certain medical conditions, and certain front-line workers. More locations have also been added to distribute vaccines, including stadiums and local pharmacies.