SANDY: Thanks to a huge mistake over the weekend, Utah didn’t vaccinate nearly as many people as it could have on Monday, one of the consequences of the real world.
Over the weekend, it spread like wildfire that Utah had too many vaccines and eligibility was opening up and anyone who wanted to sign up, could. And 7,200 relatively young, healthy people believed they were doing the right thing when they signed up for vaccination appointments.
Turns out it was just a rumor added by an error on the state’s website where people can set up an appointment. When the dust ran out, it meant those 7,200 appointments had to be canceled. Some of those slots were for Monday and no one else changed the book, said Gabe Moreno, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County Department of Health.
“It’s very unfortunate that we still have a lot of public health nurses who are ready to start making these vaccines, but we don’t have people completing them,” Moreno said.
We asked Moreno if a day of many empty chairs at vaccination sites when there is a high demand for Utahns ready for their shots shows a broken system.
“That would be a question for the state,” he replied. “We follow the details of the state guidelines for vaccinating certain priority groups and move on to these (groups) based on the state guidelines.”
We contacted the office of Governor Spencer J. Cox and asked him if the number of unused appointments is a sign that the state should extend eligibility to more people.
“The answer is not yet,” spokeswoman Jennifer Napier-Pearce said in a statement. “So far, only 41% of these men aged 65 to 69 have received at least one dose. (Seventy) + is 74% with at least one dose.”
And while he didn’t have the number available in Utahns aged 16 and over with serious health issues, he said it “has only been in place for four days, so the percentage is likely to be low.
Low, like the number of full chairs Monday inside the Sandy Mountain America Expo Center, a venue that is often one of Utah’s busiest vaccination sites.
“We have fewer full appointments,” described Lee Cherie Booth, on-site nursing supervisor at the Salt Lake County Department of Health.
When asked if there was a lot of waste on Monday, he said, “Yes, today, potentially. But that doesn’t reflect what we’re normally doing.”
If there is a silver issue in the weekend bug with the online registration website, the lost day may not be added to the wasted vaccines.
“If we don’t use all that vaccine we brought to the enclosure today, we can put it back in the fridge and it can stay in the fridge for up to five days,” he said.
Nicholas Rupp, of the Salt Lake County Department of Health, delved into what goes on with unused doses.
“Once thawed, the Pfizer vaccine should be used within five days and Moderna within 30 days, so we have many opportunities to use the vaccine for any non-presentation,” he said in a statement. “The vaccine is kept refrigerated until the dose receptor is in situ, so waste is minimal to non-existent. In the extremely rare case, we have an additional dose in a vial at the end of the day, we vaccinate a member of the personnel or volunteers who have not yet been vaccinated “.
We also asked Rupp about a screenshot of the state’s vaccination schedule taken on Monday at 11 a.m., which showed many available time slots, some within minutes of the screenshot, being met.
This photo was taken shortly after 11am today. See all available appointments that are not in use. I’ve learned, each of these time slots can get to 50. Next @ KSL5TV News at 5pm and 6pm, why waste and what happens to the vaccine when no apps are made? pic.twitter.com/mMOFxB3IkK
– Matt Gephardt KSL (@KslMatt) March 1, 2021
“Each dating space can hold between 30 and 50 people depending on the venue, so when you see an available space as the screenshot, there could be 49 people booked with one available,” he replied.
“We may be a little frustrated as a community that maybe we are one day behind in getting things back to normal again,” Matt Gephardt of KSL asked Booth back at the Expo Center. “But don’t we necessarily feel frustrated because we put a lot of vaccines in the toilet?”
“Okay. We don’t waste any vaccines,” Booth said. “It could be half a day or a day today that we don’t meet all our appointments.”