Lifeboat Foundation News Blog: Author Genevieve Klien
How To Get A COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment In NYC
Searching for a coronavirus vaccine appointment in the Big Apple can feel like the pandemic equivalent of trying to book a table at Rao's — everybody wants in, but you may as well fuhgeddaboudit.
Those who are eligible for a coveted dose have to wade through a series of notoriously clunky websites — with no coordination between city, state and private sites or systems — searching for elusive appointments that get snatched up as quickly as they become available.
"It's a totally disjointed and confusing process to get an appointment. It requires checking many different websites and generally people who are not tech savvy or don't have hours of free time are just not able to navigate their way through the process," Councilman Mark Levine, the chair of the council's Committee on Health and a frequent critic on the vaccine rollout, told The Post.
S. Mitra Kalita, the publisher of Epicenter-NYC — a newsletter that now has a network of volunteers who are scheduling appointments for the public — says the confounding system is particularly "a deterrent" for people who aren't digitally savvy or don't have the time to check multiple websites.
Those who are eligible for a COVID-19 dose have to wade through a series of notoriously clunky websites for elusive appointments that get snatched up quickly.Matthew McDermott There's also a "disconnect" between the times of day appointments are available and the limited schedules of many essential workers, she noted.
"If you're an essential worker who has one day off and a limited window, and we're not even talking about transportation and the hopscotch going around across the boroughs, suddenly the window for what you can do is limited," Kalita said.
But unlike Rao's, securing a vaccine booking isn't impossible — and millions of doses have already been administered across the five boroughs.
Here's a guide to navigating the various options, including the best and worst sign-up systems as well as tips for snagging that spot once you're there.
All New Yorkers are expected to be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine by the summer. REUTERS First, find out if you're eligible As of March 30, a select group of essential workers, New Yorkers with pre-existing conditions and those age 30 and over will be eligible for the vaccine.
All New Yorkers 16 and over will be eligible to sign up for and receive the vaccine starting April 6.
To find out if you are eligible for the jab, head to the state's "Am I Eligible" website and input the required information. The portal will ask about age, essential worker status and any conditions that can lead to a compromised immune system. Residents can also call 1-833-NYS-4-VAX to find out if they are eligible, check the city's website or refer to the below list:
Because the city and state systems are so confounding, ad hoc networks of good Samaritans have created their own online portals and programs to connect New Yorkers with appointments.
Here are some of the places to start before you even trying to navigate the booking sites directly:
Epicenter-NYCEpicenter-NYC started as a newsletter for Jackson Heights, Queens during the height of the pandemic, and now is a hub for a team of volunteers who find appointments for people and then sign them up.
"We felt like the greatest service we could provide is helping people navigate this Byzantine system of securing a vaccine appointment and it was very much by word of mouth," Kalita, the newsletter's publisher, told The Post.
Its volunteers have figured out ways to "game" the system and readily find appointments for those in need — but even then it often takes multiple helpers searching for just one person, she said.
People can sign up to get an appointment scheduled for them by filling out Epicenter-NYC's form.
The federal government recently rolled out its own map-based tool for finding shots across the country called VaccineFinder.Dennis A. Clark NYC Vaccine List NYC Vaccine List searches over 700 vaccine sites across the city and lists appointments as they become available in real-time, in one place.
Although users ultimately still have to grapple with the various inoculation locations' sign-up systems, it cuts out the hard part of finding which have open slots at the right time.
Dan Benamy, a Brooklyn software developer, created the website with a team of volunteers after signing up his grandparents for vaccines and realizing how difficult it was.
"The appointments get booked but more come online everyday and throughout the day," Benamy told The Post of his page.
"We do hear a lot from people who keep an eye on the site and refresh it and are regularly able to find appointments, so I know it can be frustrating going on there and not finding something right away, but folks need a little morale boost. Keep at it, they will find appointments."
Users can toggle between locations and whether or not the site has appointments for second doses. People under the age of 50, or residents who aren't teachers or don't have an underlying condition, can also filter out pharmacy appointments, which currently only give jabs to those groups. There is also a map tool that shows availability close to home.
TurboVaxTurboVax uses a similar process to scour for appointments at over 400 city and state sites in the Big Apple. It also announces appointments as they become available on its Twitter feed.
Software engineer Huge Ma created the service in two weekends for $50 after trying to sign his mom up for a shot — and says he has helped tens of thousands of people score slots since, according to The Guardian.
VaccineFinderThe federal government also has its own map-based tool for finding shots across the country called VaccineFinder.
Eventually the service is supposed to show all vaccine locations, but right now that functionality only exists in a handful of states — and New York is not one of them,.
Currently, it only points to federal vaccine locations in the Empire State, which largely means pharmacies. But it's a good way to see which independent drug store are offering jabs, and also shows which outlets have doses in stock. You can also search for one specific type of vaccine, like just Pfizer or just Johnson & Johnson.
VaccineFinder is a good way to see which independent drug store are offering jabs.Dennis A Clark How to book a COVID vaccine appointment in NYC online Through the City of New York New York City's Vaccine Finder displays both city- and privately-run locations like pharmacies and local clinics on a map — though users still need to click out to the various sign-up pages for each site.
Be prepared to sit around and press refresh over and over again if you're picky about your location and time slot.
And to sign up at one of the city-run locations, you'll need to go through the rigamarole of entering all your personal information each time you try to score an available appointment.
"For a lay person, you have to input your information, it'll say no appointments available and you have to refresh and then you have to input your information all over again," said Kalita.
"You're filling out more than a dozen pieces of information only to be told over and over there's no appointments available… if you input that information all over again, only to be thwarted every time, at some point you'll say it's impossible to get a vaccine."
The vaccine finder also doesn't allow residents to filter out what type of appointments they need, so the options are flooded with pharmacy slots — which aren't eligible to all — and sites that only offer specifically first or second doses.
George Hagstrom, a volunteer with Epicenter-NYC, said new appointments tend to drop on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon for the city-run vaccine hubs. For the city's Health and Hospital sites, they often come just after midnight.
The state's online COVID system is only for its handful of locations.REUTERS Through the New York State website The state's online system is only for its handful of locations — which include hubs at the Javits Center in Manhattan and Aqueduct racetrack in Queens — but is more streamlined and integrated than the city's.
To sign up for a vaccine appointment, start with the Am I Eligible page. Once it has established that you are eligible, a list of available sites, and their distance from your zip code, will pop up and you can click through to see open appointments.
A volunteer from the "Covid Vaccine Help" Facebook page wrote Monday that new appointments appear to be loaded every six minutes, starting at two minutes past the beginning of each hour.
"To be clear the times are: :02 :08 :14 :20 :26 :32 :38 :44: :50 :56," the post reads.
":02 and :32 are the most consistent. It's not the second the [minute] hits but 15-30 secs after."
Sarah Kulkarni, a volunteer with Epicenter-NYC, has found refreshing the state's page over and over until a slot shows up to be the most effective method, but advised to "quickly scroll past" the first appointments that appear, as they are "always snagged by bots" — computer scripts people have written to automatically reserve slots.
"Book first and figure out if it works later. You can always cancel if it's truly a conflict," Kulkarni wrote in a blog post.
Though a big chain pharmacySeveral pharmacy chains are currently offering the vaccine to people aged 50 and up, teachers and childcare workers and those with pre-existing health conditions.
For Walgreens and Duane Reade, residents need to first create an account, then go through a brief eligibility questionnaire.
While the interface itself is quite smooth, many users have recently complained online about hitting a roadblock because the site requires them to book their first- and second-dose appointments at the same time — but no second-dose slots have been available.
For Rite Aid, start with its vaccine scheduler. The eligibility screening is simple enough, but finding appointments is more cumbersome. Unlike Walgreens — which shows you all available slots in your area on one page — you will be asked to put in a zip or neighborhood, and then shown a list of local stores. You must then click into each one to see if appointments are available, repeating the process store by store
CVS is currently offering coronavirus vaccines at select stores in New York City, Long Island and upstate.
To get a shot there, create an account first to ensure you're eligible, then book an appointment. New slots seem to appear around 6 a.M. And midnight, according to volunteers who book appointments for others.
How to book an appointment by phoneFor those who'd rather not sit in front of a computer refreshing a screen all day, the city and state each have COVID-19 vaccine hotlines where you can set up appointments at sites they control.
The state operates over 25 facilities from the Big Apple to North Country, including the Javits Center in Manhattan, Jones Beach, SUNY Albany and the state fairgrounds in Syracuse. Residents need to call 1-833-NYS-4-VAX to set up an appointment.
The city also operates dozens of sites across the five boroughs. To make an appointment by phone, residents can call 1-877-VAX-4-NYC.
For the vaccine site at the Fort Washington Armory in Washington Heights specifically, appointments can be made by phone at 646-838-0319, where bilingual operators are available. The majority of slots at the site are reserved for specific zip codes in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
New Yorkers who are eligible to be vaccinated at a pharmacy may be able to call their local stores to make an appointment.
Other tips and tricks for finding a COVID vaccine in NYCMaya, an Upper West Sider who goes by the moniker "The Appointment Whisperer" and didn't want to share her last name, set up alerts on Twitter pages run by bots that post available appointments so she can help others sign up.
"Basically as soon as the alert pops up, I click on it, that's it, I don't wait, if it comes I'm immediately clicking on it," she advised.
People can reach out to Maya for appointment help in the five boroughs by emailing AppointmentWhisperer@gmail.Com.
"It feels like decades worth of training with Ticketmaster concert ticket sales, I finally have a skillset that I can put it to good use with," she quipped.
She said she was able to help a restaurant worker, and his father who's battling cancer, set up an appointment by waiting for a Twitter alert.
"His phone is in his pocket and he's serving people and he's not going to see it right away and even if he sees it three minutes later, everything's gone," the appointment expert explained.
"After I got all of this details, I was able to book them."
Here are a few more tips:
CDC Recommends RSV Shots For Older Adults, Clearing The Way For Vaccinations To Begin This Fall
Pfizer and GSK have a green light to distribute their RSV vaccines to older adults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
That makes the two vaccines the first for RSV to become publicly available in the U.S.
The shots are expected to roll out in the fall — before the next RSV season, which typically peaks in the winter — the CDC said.
Last week, an advisory committee to the CDC decided that adults ages 65 and up may get one of the newly FDA-approved RSV vaccines in consultation with doctors. The committee voted 9-5 in favor of the recommendation.
The group also voted to recommend the shots for adults ages 60 to 64 based on individual risk levels and in consultation with doctors.
The CDC's director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, endorsed the panel's recommendations Thursday — the final step before the shots could become available to the public.
Respiratory syncytial virus causes a lower respiratory illness that is generally mild for most healthy adults. But in serious cases, it can lead to pneumonia or bronchiolitis, which inflames airways and clogs them with mucus.
Older people are particularly vulnerable to severe outcomes: RSV kills up to 10,000 people ages 65 or older every year in the U.S.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer's and GSK's shots last month. So far, they are the first and only RSV vaccines to have earned the agency's approval.
Walgreens said it expects to offer the new vaccines at pharmacies across the country in time for the next respiratory illness season. Eligible recipients will be able to make appointments online, over the phone or through the Walgreens app once vaccines are available, the company said. CVS Pharmacy said it will also work with vaccine manufacturers to ensure access to RSV shots at more than 9,000 locations.
The FDA approved GSK's RSV vaccine, called Arexvy, based on the results of a late-stage clinical trial that showed that a single dose lowered the risk of symptomatic illness by 83% and of severe illness by 94%. More recent data presented to the CDC showed that protection against symptomatic illness fell to 77% by around 14 months after vaccination, while protection against severe illness fell to 85%.
Pfizer's single-dose vaccine, Abrysvo, was approved based on a similar trial in which it reduced the risk of symptomatic illness by as much as 86%. The company's latest data showed that protection waned slightly by around 18 months after vaccination, though it was still as high as 79%.
Both vaccines produced mild side effects in some recipients, including injection site pain, fatigue and muscle pain.
In evaluating the safety of Pfizer's vaccine, the FDA identified one case of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, and one case of Miller Fisher syndrome, a rare nerve disease related to Guillain-Barré.
The FDA also identified one case of Guillain-Barré that was potentially related to GSK's vaccine, as well as a higher number of incidences of atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm) among vaccine recipients relative to the trial's control group.
Some members of the CDC advisory committee last week highlighted a lack of data about how well immunocompromised people, those with underlying health issues and people over age 75 would tolerate the vaccines.
Members also expressed concern about price. GSK said a single dose would cost $200 to $295, and Pfizer estimated that a single dose would cost $180 to $270. (Those prices, though, do not reflect what insured patients would pay.)
In addition to older adults, RSV can pose a major health threat to infants. Two tools to protect babies from the virus could become available before the fall, as well.
An independent advisory committee to the FDA voted last month to recommend Pfizer's maternal RSV vaccine, which is given to pregnant mothers to protect their infants from RSV. The vaccine is the same formulation as Pfizer's shot for older adults.
The FDA advisory panel this month also recommended an injectable drug that can protect infants up to 2 years old from RSV. The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca developed the monoclonal antibody drug, called nirsevimab, in partnership with Sanofi. It is administered as a single injection and functions similarly to a vaccine.
CORRECTION (June 22, 2023, 10:20 a.M. ET): A previous version of this story mischaracterized the strength of the committee's recommendation. They determined that older adults "may" get the vaccines, not that they "should."
Walgreens Introduces Mobile Clinics, Same-day Appointments Across The Country, Ensuring Ease Of Access To Covid-19 Vaccine
Walgreens Introduces Mobile Clinics, Same-day Appointments Across the Country, Ensuring Ease of Access to Covid-19 Vaccine
03 Maio 2021 - 10:31AMBusiness Wire
Mobile clinics will operate in underserved areas of Chicago in May and expand to nine additional cities across the country
Following the success of more than 700 vaccination clinics across the country hosted primarily at churches and community centers, Walgreens will activate multiple mobile clinics in Chicago. The traveling mobile clinics will focus on bringing COVID-19 vaccines directly to underserved communities and those with barriers to accessing the vaccine. Over the next two months, additional mobile clinics will make stops in a number of locations across the country.
Individuals will be able to walk up to a mobile clinic and receive a vaccination at that time from a Walgreens pharmacy team member. Walgreens is partnering with local organizations across the mobile clinic stops to make community members aware of upcoming dates.
Walgreens has administered more than 15 million COVID-19 vaccines to date, and continues to expand vaccination models to ensure all individuals have access to a COVID-19 vaccine. Walgreens has hosted more than 700 vaccination clinics in underserved communities with hundreds more planned in the next month. Additional efforts underway to ensure convenient access to vaccinations include:
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