How to get COVID vaccine sooner not later? Kansas City experts reveal a few tricks
Your game plan for getting the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible should include putting your name on multiple alert lists, doctors advised Thursday.
“If you are on multiple lists and you find that there’s a place that you can get an appointment very quickly, take it,” said Dr. David Wild, vice president of performance improvement for the University of Kansas Health System.
“We’re all of the mindset that the faster we can get vaccine doses to patients the better off we are. And there’s no pride or hurt from going somewhere else or going to the first available space.”
This week, hundreds of thousands more residents of Missouri and Kansas became eligible to receive the vaccine. Missouri on Monday greenlighted seniors 65 and over and people with certain health conditions. On Thursday, Kansas opened up its broad Phase 2 of vaccines, including seniors and essential workers, such as teachers.
On Thursday public health directors from across the Kansas City metro issued a joint statement saying vaccine demand is high but “the supply remains very limited.”
Most public health departments for area counties and the city of Kansas City have set up online surveys where people can sign up to receive information on vaccine eligibility and availability. Johnson County’s site became so overwhelmed last weekend that it had to upgrade its server.
Truman Medical Centers experienced a similar overload with its online sign-up and is now asking people to call instead.
KU will have a sign-up soon, too, Wild said during KU’s daily morning briefing. It will be a way “for the community to signal to us that they’d like information or like to be contacted when it’s their turn to receive vaccine here. And we’ll be turning that on, now that we’re in Phase 2, very, very quickly.”
Wild said a lot of patients ask whether they can get the vaccine in Kansas if they live in Missouri.
The answer might depend on whom you ask, or where you sign up.
“It is not a problem. You can receive the vaccine anywhere,” Dr. Catherine Satterwhite, regional health administrator for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said during the KU briefing. “The federal government actually purchased the vaccine, so it can be administered anywhere.”
States share information with one another through a “huge data infrastructure” that creates a record of when and where you get the vaccine, Satterwhite said.
However, Truman Medical Centers is signing up only Missouri residents eligible in the state’s current distribution phase, and those appointments are already into March, Charlie Shields, president and CEO, told The Star Thursday.
“We had a self-scheduling portal on our website that we scheduled several (people) on,” said Shields. “And then we shut that down because we did not want it to get overwhelmed … build expectations that we couldn’t achieve.”
Truman’s vaccine number — — 816-404-2273 (CARE)— is available from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays.
“The number one thing that we hear from states, cities, everyone, is that we’d really like more vaccine,” said Satterwhite.
“The other thing I want to make clear is that the federal government continues to distribute and allocate vaccine on a pro rata basis, based on population of the state. …
“So those numbers are what they are. They are proportionately the same across all jurisdictions in the United States.”
But if you do put your name on several lists, don’t forget about them once you score an appointment, said Dr. Nathan Bahr, an infection disease specialist with the KU health system.
“I think it’s a really smart thing and a good thing to sign up for as many lists, alerts, etc., that you can so that you can get a dose as soon as you can,” said Bahr.
“But once you are fortunate enough to get that first dose, please make sure you still pay attention to those other lists so that if they offer you appointments you can say ‘Oh no I already have it,’ so that another person can get that vaccine.
“The last thing we want to do is have systems sort of waiting for people to get back to them or holding up doses. We want everybody to get these as soon as possible.”
The KU health system, which has already vaccinated hundreds of its employees, is working out plans for doing mass vaccinations with a goal of distributing 10,000 doses a week, said Wild.
But, “it’s one thing to say starting today we’re entering into Phase 2. It’s something very different to say that means that a lot of the people in Phase 2 will actually be able to be vaccinated in the next day or even week, probably.”
Wild said about a third or more of the population in Johnson and Wyandotte County falls into the 65 and older category, “maybe as many as 150,000 in Johnson County. That’s a lot of people to vaccinate. That’s going to take some time. It’s going to take weeks, in fact.”
The public health departments recommended that anyone who wants the vaccine should:
▪ Monitor your local public health department’s website for additional information.
▪ Don’t just show up at a vaccination site. All vaccinations will be conducted by appointment only.
▪ Commit to the appointment if you register to help ensure that doses are not wasted.
.jpg)