SANDY – Thanks to a massive blunder over the weekend, Utah hasn’t vaccinated nearly as many people as it could have Monday – one of many real-world consequences.
Over the weekend, word spread like wildfire that Utah had too many vaccines and that anyone was eligible to apply, they could. And 7,200 relatively young and healthy people thought they were doing the right thing when they signed up for appointments to get vaccinated.
Apparently it was just a rumor exacerbated by a glitch on the state’s website where people can book an appointment. When the dust settled, those 7,200 appointments had to be canceled. Some of those slots were for Monday and no one else rebooked them, said Gabe Moreno, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County health department.
“It’s very unfortunate that we still have a lot of public health nurses ready to give those injections, but we don’t have people to fill them in,” Moreno said.
We asked Moreno if a day with many empty seats at vaccination sites, when there is a huge demand for Utahns ready for their injection, shows a broken system.
“That would be a question for the state,” he replied. “We follow the details of the state directive to vaccinate certain priority groups and we go to those (groups) based on state directives.”
We contacted Governor Spencer J. Cox’s office and asked if the number of unused appointments is a sign that the state should expand eligibility to more people.
“The answer is not there yet,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Napier-Pearce in a statement. “So far, only 41% of those 65-69 year olds have received at least one dose. (Seventy) + are 74% on at least one dose.”
And while she didn’t have the number available at the ages of 16 and older in Utah with serious health issues, she said “it’s only been in effect for four days, so the percentage is probably low.
Low, like the number of seats full Monday at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy, a location that tends to be one of the busiest vaccination sites in Utah.
“We have fewer appointments that are full,” described Lee Cherie Booth, the site’s nurse supervisor for the Salt Lake County Health Department.
Asked if there was a lot of trash on Monday, she said, “Yes, possibly today. But that doesn’t reflect what we normally do.”
If there’s a silver lining to the weekend blunder with the online registration website, it could very well be that the wasted day doesn’t match the wasted vaccines.
“If we don’t use all of that vaccine that we brought to the site today, we can return it to the refrigerator and it can stay in the refrigerator for up to five days,” she said.
Nicholas Rupp of the Salt Lake County Health Department went on to elaborate on what happens with unused doses.
“Once thawed, the Pfizer vaccine must be used within five days and Moderna within 30 days, so we have ample opportunity to use the vaccine for no-shows,” he said in a statement. “The vaccine stays refrigerated until the dose recipient is on site, so waste is minimal to non-existent. In the extremely rare event that we have an extra dose in a vial at the end of the day, we vaccinate a staff member or volunteer who did not do this.
We also asked Rupp for a screenshot of the state’s vaccination schedule, taken at 11 a.m. on Monday, showing many available time slots – some within minutes of the screen capture – that are left blank.
This photo was taken just after 11:00 today. Look at all those available appointments that go unused. Each of those epochs could be as long as 50, I learned. Coming @ KSL5TV News at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., why the waste and what happens to the vaccine if no appts are made? pic.twitter.com/mMOFxB3IkK
– Matt Gephardt KSL (@KslMatt) March 1, 2021
“Each meeting room can hold 30-50 people depending on the location, so if you see an available room like the screenshot, it could be 49 people booked with an available room,” he replied.
“We as a community can be a little frustrated that we might be a day behind to get things back to normal,” KSL Booth’s Matt Gephardt asked back at the Expo Center. “But we’re not necessarily frustrated because we put a lot of vaccines in the toilet?”
‘Right. We don’t waste any vaccine at all, ”Booth said. “It could take half a day or a day today that we haven’t fulfilled all of our commitments.”