Anxious Whatcom residents jam phone lines seeking appointments for COVID-19 vaccine
Anxious to know when they can be vaccinated against COVID-19, droves of Whatcom County residents are calling health care providers — jamming their phone lines for hours, even crashing them.
Family Care Network has reported fielding thousands of inquiries.
PeaceHealth said it is experiencing a 4,000% increase in daily queries from the community.
The Whatcom County Health Department has reported getting an ever increasing number of calls, as has Unity Care NW.
“We are struggling to keep up with phone inquiries about vaccine availability while also answering calls from patients who are trying to access needed medical care,” said Michele Anderson, spokesperson for Family Care Network, which is the primary care provider for nearly 100,000 patients in Whatcom and Skagit counties.
Patients also are reaching out to Family Care Network via email, social media, its website and patient portals. Combined with calls, Anderson estimated that the number of inquiries since mid-December — when vaccines were first approved for emergency use — have totaled “in the tens of thousands.”
She added: “Several of our clinics neared max capacity on their phone lines this week. When this happens, patients can’t get through. Hold times are also significantly higher than normal.”
PeaceHealth, the largest health care provider in Whatcom County and the operator of St. Joseph hospital, has experienced a 4,000% surge since Washington state this week expanded vaccine eligibility to people in the first tier of group 1B. That’s people who are 65 years and older, and those who are 50 years and older who are living in multi-generational households.
On a normal day, PeaceHealth gets about 1,000 calls, according to spokesperson Bev Mayhew.
Supply vs. demand
Demand is high but the doses coming to Whatcom County — and elsewhere in the state and nation — aren’t keeping up, to the frustration of the public. Even as the state expanded the list of who could get vaccinated for COVID-19, efforts to vaccinate people in the first grouping, known as phase 1A and made up of first responders, health care workers and people who live or work in long-term care facilities, was still ongoing.
During a virtual briefing on Thursday, Jan. 21, Washington State Department of Health officials said they have reached out to President Joe Biden’s administration to find out when more vaccine doses will be allocated to the state.
“More than 42,000 Whatcom County residents became eligible for vaccination on Monday, but in total there are only 1,000 more doses of the vaccine coming to providers this week. There is simply not enough vaccine in our community,” Whatcom County Health Department Director Erika Lautenbach said in a release, referring to the vaccine expansion.
So far, the state has allocated just 10,000 doses to vaccine providers in Whatcom County, including the 1,000 doses expected this week, the county health department said.
The Washington State Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard on Wednesday reported that as of 11:59 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, Whatcom County had administered 7,212 vaccinations. The state estimates that 3.32% of the county (or approximately 7,480 residents) have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 0.73% of the county (or approximately 1,645 residents) are fully vaccinated.
Upset Whatcom County residents have taken to social media to criticize the rollout and the pace of vaccination here, compared to other parts of the state.
In response, the county health department said counties with smaller populations have been able to get and give enough vaccine doses to cover all of the workers in phase 1A, but that hasn’t been the case for Whatcom and many of the large counties in the Washington state.
A further complication is Gov. Jay Inslee’s announcement on Monday about new mass vaccination sites in other parts of the state, including in Spokane, Kennewick, Wenatchee and Ridgefield.
The county health department expects that to affect how much vaccine makes its way to providers in Whatcom, but the extent isn’t known because the number of doses has fluctuated each week.
‘So patient, it hurts’
Still waiting for its first vaccine shipment is Unity Care NW, which expects it the week of Jan. 25.
“We are unsure of the amount we will receive,” Unity Care NW representative Chris Kobdish told The Bellingham Herald. “Supply is slowly growing, but we are unable to meet demand right away.”
A PeaceHealth doctor said there was a positive in the surge of Whatcom residents contacting health care providers about the vaccine.
“This response is good news as it’s a strong indication that many people in our community want protection against the virus so they can get their lives and our community back to normal,” said James Bochsler, vice president and medical director of PeaceHealth Medical Group, Northwest.
PeaceHealth and other officials continued to urge patience, saying the vaccine rollout will take time and that health care providers will reach out to eligible patients.
People also are being advised to turn to their health care providers’ websites, social media or patient portals instead of picking up the phone to ask about their place in line and attempting to book an appointment for the vaccine. They might find themselves waiting for hours when they call, the county health department said in a release.
“We are asking folks in our community not to call their health care providers to ask about vaccinations at this time,” Lautenbach said. “We’ve all been really, really patient, for almost a year now. So patient, it hurts. We’re frustrated, and we know everyone else is frustrated, too. But we have to hang in there, for just a while longer. The end is still in sight.”
Vaccine information
Learn more online at:
▪ whatcomcounty.us/covidvaccine — the Whatcom County Health Department will provide updates on vaccine availability when it has those details.
▪ whatcomcounty.us/coviddata for COVID-19 vaccine-related data from the Washington State Department of Health.
▪ CovidVaccineWA.org has a breakdown of vaccination phases and the vaccination timeline in Washington state.
▪ findyourphasewa.org to check your eligibility for the vaccine.
