According to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker, California has only administered 37.3% of the vaccine supply.
Locally, Riverside County residents are among those who express frustration at not being able to sign up for vaccine appointments on the county website.
“I don’t lose sleep in it, but let’s face it, I’m sick of being covert,” said Cynthia Edwards of Menifee, who says she’s not only in the over-65 category, but also a substitute teacher.
He said every time he has tried to sign up for vaccine appointments on the Riverside County website, none are available.
“I know people who are 20 years younger than us who seem to get it,” Edwards said. “I don’t know what’s going on here.”
“I called my own healthcare provider and they told me they got 2,000 vaccines. They’re running a lottery of algorithms so they can determine which of their 10,000 patients is most at risk of getting it.”
Riverside County officials acknowledged a bug on their website that caused it to crash shortly after appointments were available Thursday at noon. They say that while the problem has been fixed, it is not entirely under their control.
“The website is an association, as this part of the country is through the county, and part through a state platform,” Drs. Geoffrey Leung with the Riverside University Health System. “The state platform is being updated”.
Leung said a pilot program is being tested by two other counties to see if improvements to the platform will be beneficial and increase the stability of COVID-19 vaccine websites in the county. But the biggest problem is not the website itself, but the limited supply of the vaccine.
“The main challenge we have right now with the vaccine is supply,” Leung said. “If we look at the state of California, the total allocation so far is only enough to administer the vaccine to 5% of the population.”
Riverside County announced 10,000 additional vaccine appointments that will be available online at noon this Saturday. These appointments can be made on the county website here.
San Bernardino County residents can request vaccine appointments at the county site here.
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