Elderly covid vaccination

[SFBayBoomer]

Originally Posted by Texas Ag 93

Both my Father and FIL (both in their late 70s) have been able to schedule their shots with a large health system here in Houston and will be getting theirs in the next week or two.

Originally Posted by CarnivalGal

Depends on where you are. Texas has given the go ahead to start vaccinating group 1B, but no one here in Austin is actually doing that because they haven't even gotten through all of group 1A yet, and they don't have enough vaccine.

My in-laws are in Houston and they were able to get an appointment for next week through one of the large hospital systems, but they are having to travel about an hour out of the city for it.

I have a "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." transcript in front of me from this morning, and a reporter told Martha Raddatz, "To give you an idea how this is going, the city of Houston opened up a phone line to book vaccination appointments. They were offering 750 shots, and they received 250,000 phone calls."

Remember how we were supposed to vaccinate 20 million people in the U.S. before the end of 2020?
It was not even close. I know that here in the SF Bay Area, our frontline healthcare workers have not all been vaccinated yet, let alone other doctors and nurses (so that elective and important procedures like colonoscopies, etc. can proceed) and then we have a variety of different workers before elderly 65+ next and everyone else.
We begin 2021 very far behind in protecting the most vulnerable and everyone else, and we aren't even close to putting this disease in the rear-view mirror.

I would love to see a spreadsheet online which compares how state is doing vaccinating the elderly, in what order, and how successful they are keeping to their vaccination schedule.

[cat1116]

Saw a notification for my current state/local area that they were giving vacciations for those over 80.
Heard from a relative up in NE that their mother in one of those assisted living places was recently diagnosed with Covid19 but they did not have the vaccinations up there. Maybe they do now.

[Veniceman]

Originally Posted by Travelassie

LOL at the idea of getting appointments for covid vaccination via Ticketmaster. But whatever works, I guess, and IMO making appointments should be better than having to wait in long long lines with no assurance they won't run out before you get to the front spot.

It sounds as though they make appointments when they know the exact number of vaccine doses they will be getting, and that number may not be known to them much in advance.

It's a work in progress, I'm sure it will get better.

Eventbrite is the ticketing agency running it. I agree with you. Supply is very limited right now so I do believe things will improve as time passes. Even though Florida has opened this up to 65 and older I don't expect to get it until it becomes available at CVS and Walgreens in late March at the earliest. Even then lines will be long. I'm hoping to get it by early summer.

[JL]

I was able to get him vaccinated today. It was a walk-in process which was a mess. We had to wait for 4 hours in line, but it was finally done. I don't recommend doing this. Go with the scheduled appointment or invitation from your local hospital system instead. This walk-in should only be done if you are unable to schedule or didn't receive any invite from your local hospital system. Good luck and thanks!

[WellShoneMoon]

I received my first vaccination this morning. I'm very grateful that my county is doing this by appointment only, and that I was able to get registered and get an appointment online before they closed the appointment window. It was very easy today: about an hour and a half from arrival to departure, and that includes the 15-minute post-vaccination observation period.

[Veniceman]

Our county in Florida has been swamped with registration attempts. They get maxed out within one minute. You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than getting registered here. I've been trying neighboring counties but haven't had any luck there either. Our tri-county region is the Old People capital of the world, though so I'm thinking we may have to get mobile and try elsewhere.