In less than an hour, Martha’s Vineyard individuals aged 65 and older and those with two or more chronic health conditions, including asthma, booked all available COVID-19 vaccine appointments for the upcoming week at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
In an email to The Times, Marissa Lefebvre confirmed that the hospital booked all 1,235 available appointments for the new group. The appointments are for the upcoming week of Feb. 22. The hospital has a total of 1,826 vaccine appointments booked for this coming week. This includes Saturday’s sign ups plus 591 previously scheduled second dose appointments.
Once the hospital knows next week how many doses it will be receiving, they will announce another round of signups for 65+ residents.
Appointment booking opened at 8 am and was filled by 8:50 am, Saturday morning.
Oak Bluffs resident Shelley Christiansen told The Times, “Online vaccine signup for us 65 plussers this morning has been kinda like opening day for summer ferry rezzies. But got mine!”
Individuals will not be notified via Patient Gateway and must sign up through the hospital’s website.
That was not fun. It took nearly an hour of trying, on both a computer and phone. Considering that many of us in this category of eligibility have to watch out for high blood pressure, there has to be a less anxious way to get yourself an appointment. Competing with thousands of others for a limited number of spaces while navigating through to Patient Gateway (which would not work most of the dozen+ times I tried) was nerve-wracking. After all that, I did get an appointment for which I am grateful, but it is clear (from social media) that many did not.
Shortly after 8 am this morning, we accessed the website to set up an appointment. However, we did not receive an email to acknowledge any appointment. Will we be receiving any confirmation of the appointment from the hospital?
The process appears to be dependent on your state’s ability to administer the program. Here in Oregon the PIC can’t seem to get anything right. I spent some time finding my way through the morass and was successful after several tries – then made a cheat sheet for my friends and passed it along. We all need a ten year old gamer beside us to guide us.
It was a very frustrating experience ! I’m not sure if everyone knows that you have to enroll on the Mass General-Brigham website first. They will give you an activation code, then you enter a user name and password. Then you go to the MV Hospital website to get an appointment.
I persevered and using a tablet, my computer and my phone toggling back and forth I finally snagged an appointment. When I’d get to the part about choosing a time, if I clicked “schedule appointment “it threw me off the site 3 or 4 times. “Still she persevered” and I did receive a confirmation email.
The Times might think about a “How To” on their front page for next week…..
Does anybody have a guess as to how many people are in this category ? on Island of course .
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