Courtesy of the Mountain View Fire Department
Firefighters started assisting distribute vaccines to people unable to leave their homes last week.
The long wait for COVID-19 vaccine eligibility ends this week for all but our region’s youngest members. Santa Clara County quietly revised its online vaccination information Monday night, allowing all residents ages 16 and over to start booking appointments, although it also noted that they weren't eligible to actually receive the vaccine until Thursday.
Residents calling the county's line to book an appointment report hearing conflicting accounts of whether they could make appointments Tuesday and Wednesday or had to wait. Phone calls appeared to surface appointment availability not visible online. Many locations operated by the county weren’t yet listing online availability for Thursday and beyond as of Monday night, and the health department press office would only say they were “hoping” to have the vaccine supply adequate to offer online appintments come Thursday. But most local vaccine locations have only been listing availability a few days in advance, so a lack of visible bookings Monday didn't indicate any known or anticipated lack of supply for later in the week.
The days leading up to this opening saw a scramble of competing interpretations as people tried to make sense of when and how they were permitted to make appointments. The huge variety of pharmacies and health providers operating individual web screening and booking services will each update their systems independently but should, in theory, quickly align with guidance from the county. Many already-eligible residents have been unable to navigate the chaotic system and secure an appointment, but a profusion of homemade search tools aggregate available appointment data and try to make the process slightly less painful.
Mukesh Aggarwal, an engineer who works in Mountain View, created a Telegram channel that monitors appointment availability across a huge variety of regional providers and offers a rolling series of updates to followers (it is free and accessible to all). Residents have been driving to regions of California with vaccine surplus that led to early eligibility expansions, such as Sacramento, Bakersfield or Fresno. UC Davis has been operating a vaccine site in Sacramento with broad appointment availability that is open to all – make a health account with their system to see full available times.
Residents unable to leave their homes for vaccines are being reached via the county’s Mobile In-Home Vaccination Program, which Mountain View firefighters began delivering last week. Email [email protected] for help setting up a visit if you or someone you assist would qualify. And a loose network of independent volunteers have been trading best practices on how to help people schedule appointments via Facebook groups like Bay Area Vaccine Hunters, where local residents ask questions, debate interpretation of eligibility rules and share extremely detailed advice on how to help with vaccine bookings for those with particular needs.
Email [email protected] if you’re helping connect people to appointments and have observations to share, or if you could use some help connecting to these resources yourself.
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Vaccine appointment booking now open to all 16 and over - Los Altos Town Crier
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