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Vaccine 'lottery': Some lucky Americans are getting the few remaining doses

2021-01-23T13:28:46.602Z


Clinics that administer COVID-19 vaccines in the US have put in place lists of stakeholders to receive doses that would otherwise be thrown away and choose their names at random. At other times, health personnel come looking for him. Those who have been lucky enough to get vaccinated this way express surprise and relief.


By The Associated Press

A man found his fortune in a supermarket bakery.

Two others found her while working the night shift at a Subway fast food chain cafe.

And yet another was chosen from a list of 15,000 applicants.

As millions of Americans wait for the opportunity to receive the coronavirus vaccine, a lucky few are managing to get ahead of the line when clinics look for candidates so they don't waste their remaining doses that would be unusable by the end of the day.

Luck is often about being in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes people who happen to be near a clinic at closing time

are offered leftover injections that would otherwise be thrown away

.

At other times, health workers go out looking for someone who wants to be immunized.

Some hospitals even have waiting lists and choose names at random.

These opportunities are becoming increasingly rare, due to the nationwide vaccine shortage.

Jesse Robinson shows the arm in which he received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

AP

"One of the nurses told me I should go buy a lottery ticket right now," recalled Jesse Robinson, outside a Nashville, Tennessee, clinic, where the 22-year-old was selected from a list of 15,000 names for get the vaccine.

"I'm not going to give it too much thought.

I'm glad it was me

."

David MacMillan was shopping for ingredients for a chickpea recipe at a Giant grocery market in Washington when a woman in a lab coat from the market's pharmacy approached him and his friend.

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“I received two doses of the Moderna vaccine.

The pharmacy closes in 10 minutes.

Do you want them? "MacMillan, 31, recalled the woman telling him." I said to myself, 'Let's go for it.'

After MacMillan posted a video of his experience on the social network TikTok, the supermarket chain was flooded with calls and people for days, loitering in hopes of getting a shot.

This type of situation has become one of the most bizarre scenes of the vaccination campaign in the United States, which began about a month ago.

The short life of vaccines when thawed

Once a vial is removed from the ultra-cold refrigerator and thawed and, furthermore, once its seal is pierced and the first dose is removed, those who administer the vaccine have to hurry up and use it before it spoils, even if that means injecting those who do not belong to the priority groups.

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While it

can be unsettling to see a 20-year-old get an injection while a 90-year-old woman in a nursing home

is still waiting, public health experts say giving someone, whoever the person, a dose is better than throwing it away .

"As far as I'm concerned, get anybody vaccinated but the dog," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.

A client tipped off hairstylist Hanna Widger about some Los Angeles clinics where she could get a leftover dose at the end of the day.

"I felt that it was something very discreet and undercover. Almost like a shady business involving drugs," he explained.

Widger said she began to cry when she received her injection: "It was almost as if after running this marathon since March, the race was already over. It was very emotional."

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In New York City, a rumor that the Brooklyn Army Terminal had extra doses sparked crowds at the vaccine distribution site and massive vehicle traffic.

On the sidewalk,

a line of hundreds of people formed

, dissipating after police told them they had been misled.

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Mike Schotte, 53, and his 72-year-old mother began visiting pharmacies near their home in Hurst, Texas, hoping there was some leftover vaccine for them.

They managed to put their names on a waiting list and received a call saying that the injections could be available if they arrived within half an hour.

"We didn't have to rush, but it was barely there on time. I'm excited to put it on," Schotte said.

There are fewer and fewer doses to spare

The City of Nashville initiated a lottery system to facilitate the distribution of excess doses.

Last month, the city's health department ended up administering doses to two workers at a Subway cafeteria at a nearby hospital so they wouldn't go to waste.

Regardless of how they get it done, those who have been lucky enough to get their first injection have a second injection reserved for weeks later.

Clinics that administer vaccines usually only have a few doses left over, on certain days.

Providers note that the chances of leftover vaccines being available to the general public are decreasing with each passing week, as vaccine eligibility expands beyond the elderly, nursing home residents and front-line medical workers.

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It is common for vaccines to be discarded during immunization campaigns worldwide.

For example, millions of doses of flu vaccines are thrown away each year.

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According to an estimate by the World Health Organization (WHO), more than half of all vaccines are thrown away because they are mishandled, expired or people missed their appointment.

With the coronavirus, this trend appears to have decreased.

Although no federal data is available, health authorities in various jurisdictions contacted by

The Associated Press

reported very few cases of discarded vaccines beyond isolated cases of doses that were accidentally or deliberately damaged.

In Cook County in Chicago, Illinois,

the Health department reported that only three of the 87,750 doses they received were wasted.

Those three were accidentally spilled by staff.

Ohio officials said 165 of the 459,000 doses distributed through last week were damaged or lost while being transported, discarded due to people missing appointments, or otherwise wasted.

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Houston, and other cities and states have similarly reported small fractions of waste.

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 "In Fort Knox, vaccines are like gold," said Dr. Ramon Tallaj, whose network of SOMOS physicians has been administering the vaccine in New York City.

Those who distribute the vaccines are the choreographers of a complicated dance to make sure they are handled correctly.

Pfizer's vaccine vials contain five doses, and sometimes one extra, and Moderna's contain 10.

Clinics do their best not to open new vials unless they have a recipient who has already scheduled an appointment to receive the injection.

At a clinic on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Jill Price said that as the end of the day approaches, if they have a feeling there will be a few doses left over, staff call people who signed up to get vaccinated the next day

to see if they can go to inject right away.

"It's such a precious opportunity, no one wants to waste it," Price said.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-01-23

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