New vaccine-by-appointment system coming

A new appointment system is to be rolled out next week to ease the congestion at vaccination centres, the immunisation’s campaign chief revealed on Thursday.

Army Major David Clarke, Co-ordinator of the National COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign, told Barbados TODAY that authorities are working to break the logjam owing to technical difficulties and the long queues that include elderly citizens.

“We will be moving to an appointment system next week, which enable us to populate the databases in various places with the information before you get there so it will just be the vaccination process, he said.

There have been growing public complaints about the process with several people in the over-70’s priority group lamenting that while they followed the procedure to register, they have not yet received a call for an appointment while others appear to be getting ahead.

While some vaccination sites appear overwhelmed with people seeking the jab others report steadily moving lines including walk-ins. Today, the Globe Drive-in was utilised as a vaccination drive-thru location.

Major Clarke appealed for patience.  He said: “Just hold tight, we will get to you. We are getting there. The numbers as you could see are rising. There is always a backlog because if we had 15,000 people apply; we are vaccinating 3,000 persons plus a day. So we are getting through and we will eventually get to everybody.

“We also look at where you live and decide to set up the clinic where the population density is greatest. So if we have two people in one area registering, then we may wait for a few more people in that area and then we set up a clinic in that area. So I can’t set up a clinic and there are only two people in that area that are registered.”

Since Wednesday night, workers with the campaign were being trained on how to use a new application that was rolled out Thursday. Major Clarke said information on the new application would be released to the public, once all involved in the process have been trained.

“We are trying to harmonize a few things to get the technology right,” he told Barbados TODAY. “What we are doing is we are not just vaccinating persons. Some countries are just vaccinating people and there is no record. But what we are doing is we are entering it into the national database. So, it would be in your record that you actually got the COVID vaccine. Like when you were a baby and you got a card with everything, we now have everything digitally.”

As of Thursday, 29,186 people had received the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Last Friday, the National Vaccination Committee issued a press release asking Barbadians to wait for a call before rushing to vaccination centres. The Committee took the position after hundreds of people overwhelmed polyclinics and vaccination centres and created long lines over five days, leading to patients with non-communicable diseases and senior citizens having to wait in line for hours because of the large number of walk-ins.

According to Major Clarke, while the issue of walk-ins has proved to be a challenge at vaccination centres in densely populated areas, the process has been flowing smoothly in rural areas.

He said: “The centres I went to were fine. St Joseph Primary was excellent. People lined up. People came according to appointments. At Hilda Skeene Primary we had quite a few walk-ins but they were elderly people who came with elderly people.

“There are some elderly people who don’t use a telephone or an email or anything so they get word of mouth and they come. But in that case, once you are over 70 that is not an issue. So certainly the urban areas were more challenging, but the rural areas are definitely doing what they are supposed to do.”

(anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)