#Jumping line for covid vaccine registration
Some vaccination sites across the country have set up formal registration systems. Stephanie Morain, a medical ethicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, says that even though we are better using doses than letting them go to waste, there are ways to use them to ensure that vaccine allocation doesn’t exacerbate these issues of privilege and access. If an incident like this happens again, which it very well may, given how sensitive these vaccines are, will those in line be more people like me: those with connections to healthcare workers, and who can drop whatever they’re doing and rush to a hospital? I was relieved to be one step safer to the people around me in the community, all the while acknowledging that my social privilege, access to technology, and vehicle had given me a major advantage. In the aftermath of the late-night scramble to get vaccinated, I felt a strange mix of relief and guilt. What happened in Seattle was a repeat of what happened a few weeks earlier, when a freezer in a northern California hospital containing 830 doses of the Moderna covid-19 vaccine malfunctioned and the medical staff decided the best move to make would be to inject every dose into anyone available, regardless of their priority status. She was vaccinated on a street corner close to Swedish Cherry Hill. A 75-year-old woman who runs a daycare left her house in a pair of flip flops. At around 3 a.m., medical workers were looking to vaccinate anyone. They posted a call for appointments on Twitter, mostly looking for folks in the priority tiers. While I was in line, I learned through Twitter that the expiring doses had been divvied among three local hospitals. The line outside had wrapped around many blocks by then. We waited for 15 minutes to monitor ourselves for any immediate post-vaccination reactions, and then left. on January 29, I received my first dose of the Moderna covid-19 vaccine. The line finally started moving fitfully, but steadily. I prayed that this late-night scramble in a poorly ventilated hospital hallway wouldn’t become a superspreader event.Īround 11:26, a nurse told us they had started vaccinations. I passed people who looked my age, some college students, and few individuals who looked like they could have belonged in the priority groups.
Those of us with a ticket walked through the hospital’s winding corridors already lined with people who had arrived before us. Here, the fading yellow ticket was a golden ticket-one that would get me one of the coveted vaccine doses. At the deli counter, these tickets would have gotten me a sandwich. A line of people had already extended outside the hospital.Ī few minutes before we were about to enter the building, a medical worker came out with the tickets. I was struck by how many cars were headed for the vaccine clinic. I was there nearly a year ago, covering the novelty of drive-through test sites for the New York Times.
The northwest campus of the University of Washington Medical Center is a short drive from my house. My husband, minutes away from going to bed, also rallied. UW Medical Center – Northwest.” I just got out of the shower and haphazardly tossed on clothes. I told my friend to put me and my husband down on the waitlist.Ī few minutes later, my friend updated me by text: “My friend said we should just go and there may be a wait but we’ll get it. And in this particular moment, all those doses were on the line and had the potential to go to waste. Worse, it might be thrown out if it doesn’t get into someone in time. If you decline, there’s no guarantee it will be given to someone of higher priority than you.
Under ordinary circumstances, would I be taking away someone else’s dose? Yes – those 1,600 doses were meant for someone else.ĭo I have a moral obligation to protect others in my community by being one more person who was immunized? Absolutely – and others argue that it’s better for someone to be vaccinated out of phase than for doses to go to waste. I quickly went through the ethical gymnastics in my head.
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