Arlington Public Health Answers Your COVID-19 Vaccine Questions

ARLINGTON, VA — Patch recently asked its readers to share their experiences on Facebook and in Neighbor Posts about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

Many people replied. Some Arlington residents like Joy Hoffman said they were able to receive their first dose without a hitch and had already scheduled an appointment to receive their second dose.

But others shared less positive experiences:

"I am an Arlington resident who is 74 yrs old and I have several chronic ailments. I have absolutely NO IDEA when I will be able to get an appointment for my first COVID vaccine. This is outrageous. I am not asking to be taken ahead of first responders or anyone else who should be ahead of me. But I would like to have a general idea when I can get started." — Susan Tyson

"Now is not the time for Arlington to be so disorganized. I filled out the online application weeks ago and haven’t heard a thing. I know that people who live in other parts of the country get regular notices saying 'we haven’t forgotten about you.' Why can’t eligible applicants like me be updated? Arlington needs to step up!" — said Melissa P.

In order to address some of our readers' concerns, Patch reached out to Ryan Hudson, public information officer for the Arlington Public Health Division, to provide some answers.

PATCH: When will people who are 65 and older with pre-existing conditions who have pre-registered online be notified of an appointment?

HUDSON: I wish I had a specific day or week I could even tell you, but unfortunately we just don't know yet. It's really dependent on our vaccine supply. That's really what everything comes back to is there's just not enough vaccine. They are next essentially. They're on deck right now. We have their names and information pre-registered. We're ready to send it out to them to invite them, to schedule an appointment. It's just a matter of actually having the amount of vaccine that we need to be able to move on to that next group.

Are people still able to go ahead and make appointments?

We don't have an open appointment system, so it's not just like anyone can come and schedule an appointment. We're encouraging people to pre-register, so we have their contact information. And then, as they're eligible and it's their turn and as we get more vaccine shipments from the state, what we do is send out an email to those folks who have pre-registered saying, "You've indicated that you are interested in the vaccine. Here's a link to schedule your appointment." So there still is that, that second step. That's a private scheduling link that we send out to folks for them to pick their appointment.

There's no place for the general public to register?

No, there's nothing for the general public to do right now. If you are in one of those eligibility groups, so if you're 65 and older or 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions, for example, and you're an Arlington resident, you can go onto the county website and you can preregister using a pre-registration form on our site.

Is there a way for people who have pre-registered to find out where they are in the queue?

No. It's not necessarily like if you pre-registered in December, you're "further ahead" in the line than someone in January. It's just like sort of a mass email that we send out and then the scheduling is done from there. It's kind of a first-come first-serve basis on that, but we continue to prioritize that group until the demand is met within that particular group. And that's whether you're 75 and older or a teacher or a police following the list of priorities that the state has outlined for us.

To expand on that, if demand declines in a particular group, will you open up pre-registration to another group?

Exactly. Right now we are still at the teacher group. That's as far as we've made it so far in terms of the employer groups. That's the other tricky thing about this. While we're prioritizing the employer groups, right now we're at the pre-K childcare employees and the next employer group is going to be food and agriculture workers, which includes veterinarians. Simultaneously, we're also distributing about 50 percent of our vaccine doses to the individual groups. And the individuals are those who are 75 and older. And then the next group that follows in line to that will be the 65 and older. There's like one bucket, which is the individuals. Then there's another bucket, which is those down through the employer groups. And we basically move through those simultaneously with the individual prioritization outlined by the state in each bucket.

Many people 75 and older who had pre-registered to be vaccinated at the Virginia Hospital Center recently had their appointments canceled. Can you explain what happened there and how they can get their appointments rescheduled?

We have our partnership with VHC to have them vaccinate the Arlington residents who are 75 and older. And they were doing that at our Walter Reed Community Center Facility. And that was going on for about a week and a half. But then because of vaccine shortages, Virginia decided they were no longer shipping vaccines directly to hospitals. So all of a sudden, VHC's vaccine supplies dried up basically overnight. They made the decision to cancel all of those first dose vaccine appointments that they had starting Jan. 26 on out. I think that they had scheduled through the end of February. I want to say 3,200 first dose appointments were canceled. Definitely over 3,000, I know that.

Since then, Arlington County Public Health has been working to reschedule all those first dose appointments for those 75-year olds and older who live in Arlington.

So, those people who had their appointments by VHC don't have to call to register again?

Yeah, if they had an appointment at VHC that was canceled, we have that information from VHC. They sent it over to us. So we have all that. We're calling and scheduling for those people now. If there is an individual who is 75 and older and did not have an appointment at VHC and has not previously pre-registered with the county, then they are encouraged to do that.

Is it true that the county can't communicate with people on AOL or Verizon platforms?

The short answer is no. It's not true that we can't communicate with them. The tool that we're using for our pre-registration ... for whatever reason, the auto confirmation email that it sends out, just saying, "Hey, thanks. We received your information." It was not sending to AOL and Verizon email addresses. We have since the addressed that and fixed it for the Verizon. Verizon is now sending, but AOL is still having issues. But — and this is the important part — our actual emails that we send out to schedule do not come through that form. We're either sending them ourselves through a county email address or a through an Eventbrite email. So, there are no issues with sending an actual scheduling appointment. It was just the auto confirmation email that gets sent out.

Why are public safety employees and teachers, many of whom don't live in Arlington, being prioritized over Arlington residents 65 and older or younger people with pre-existing conditions?

That's a decision that the state and really the CDC made and then the Virginia Department of Health followed. ... Rather than identifying these individuals who have been deemed frontline, essential workers, like public safety and teachers ... it was decided by CDC to go through their employer, where the employer is based rather than where they lived as residents.

Arlington will be receiving $2.2 million in FEMA money to help with its COVID-19 response. How will the county be using that money?

It's going to be backing distribution, helping to secure PPE and really all the logistics of actually standing up more places to distribute the vaccine.

How many locations are administering vaccine in the county?

Right now we have the clinic at our Public Health Department. So, the county right now has the one that we are operating. Through the federal partnership, some of the pharmacies in Arlington, I believe it's only CVS, but CVS and Walgreens are distributing vaccine to long-term care facilities in Virginia and also in Arlington. [VCH] is still administering their second dose appointments. So individuals who were 75 and older, who got their first dose through VHC, they'll continue to get their second dose as scheduled. We are hopeful with VHC that as the federal distribution of the vaccine increases in the coming weeks and months, that that means Virginia will go back to being able to ship vaccines directly to hospitals and be able to ship it to everywhere that wants to, and has the capabilities of distributing it. With VHC, we stand ready to partner with them going forward, and helping us distribute it as much as we can.

Also see ...

Arlington County To Receive $2.2M For COVID-19 Vaccine Response