Does anyone here have info on the roll out in Washington state? Doing some vaccine help for some friends on East Coast and was asked if I could help someone in Washington. After some reading, looks like Washington is still in Phase 1B, tier 2? And won’t open to general public until May 1. Seems later than other states.
What county in WA?
California announced all 50+ will be eligible April 1st. And, everyone 16+ will be eligible April 15th.
IMO, we are still a horrid mess.
I can’t fathom the logic behind opening to 50+ only 2 weeks before opening to everyone after having spent 3+ months micro managing which group is most deserving and qualifying. And making changes to those groups without any announcement. Sigh.
Here is were we stand…
One ‘central website’ run by the state. It only lets you book appointments at city/FEMA run mass vaccination sites. Here, in the SF Bay Area - neither the Oakland FEMA site nor the SF Moscone site has had appointments for weeks. Oakland is only giving second doses - and it’s planning to reopen with the J&J on April 5th.
Moscone has had almost no appointments for first doses for the last 2 weeks.
At this point, I personally know very few people who haven’t found a loophole in this system and gotten themselves vaccinated. But ‘we’ are the tech savvy with ability and time to keep at it…
Here is what one needs to do get an appointment:
Open a browser window for each entity (Safeway, Rite Aid, Sutter, Kaiser, Stanford, CVS, Zocdoc, and an ever increasing number of smaller, mostly hidden clinics). Make an account with each entity. Be prepared to re-enter you information each time. Sometimes twice!
Install an app with sends out notices 24/7 on available appointments. It could be 1200 openings at a pharmacy 100 miles away - but they will book anyone. It could be a midnight notification that one of the HCP has 5 openings, it could be a 6:30 a.m. notification that CVS or Rite Aid has just opened a large number of slots in a particular geographic area. Then it’s a race to book before they are all gone.
Oh, and you have to continue to check to see if any of the mass vaccine sites have an unexpected opening.
And, I almost forgot - remember to sign up with the group that give 20 minutes notice if there are leftovers at the end of the day.
And so in our case the Woodstock meets Hunger games plan continues.
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They live in Langley, WA - google tells me that is Island County?
Yes, I starting hunting for spots last night - no luck so far. I wish I had known/thought ahead - I think the location I signed up for had multiple openings when I found it. They disappeared within a few minutes.
Purdue is training something like 250 pre-med/vet students to give shots ( 
) and offering on-campus vaccinations soon. Hopefully my older D can get two doses in before graduation, 5/15.
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We were discussing this upthread. The system in place in WA through today required going through a phase finder and you couldn’t book if you didn’t meet the strict phase categories. But they are dropping that tomorrow and going to what sounds like a general vaccine booking site. They still want you to observe the phases, but now on an honor system. And it’s not known if you can book ahead for when your phase is up.
So probably no one knows what will happen! It will be interesting to see if the appointments get overwhelmed - our son has no special situation so would be part of the last phase. And he is quite honest - so may not be willing to game the system.
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This is what Island County had been saying, but who knows what they’ll say tomorrow!
https://www.islandcountywa.gov/Health/Pages/Covid-Vaccine.aspx
Here in Oregon appointments are only released 3-7 days ahead of time, so you do have to keep checking, or you can wait for an email invitation to a site if you are in a county doing that. I am seeing that appointments aren’t going nearly as quickly as they were three weeks ago – they go quickly, don’t get me wrong, but instead of in 10 minutes, it takes all day for them all to go in the Portland Metro area and in more rural counties you can always find an appointment. It seems to me that we have reached the peak of “no vaccines available” and are slowly moving toward enough for everyone.
Also, I meant to add, I know plenty of people who have gotten shots in California without a loophole or spending all day online, but they were in Southern California, so the Bay Area may be different.
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I’m in WA and have helped a number of friends get appointments. These are all people who are eligible via what they do for work (childcare, restaurant, food service, etc). vaccinehunter.org will help you find the vaccine hunter websites in your state. One in WA is covidwa.com. That scrapes many (not all) of the sites that offer the vaccine.
Safeway: If you find one at a Safeway pharmacy, note exactly which Safeway it is. Then click the register link. This will take you to an Albertson’s site where you can register and make an appointment. You now have to search for that Safeway that covidwa said has an opening. This part is annoying. The Albertson’s site won’t tell you which one’s have openings so you have to know which one you are looking for.
CVS: Their site is better and it will show you which CVS has spots in the zip code that you enter. I just checked for Seattle and there were many openings for Thursday (Pfizer).
FYI. My H and I got our vaccine at a hospital and my D got hers at a Safeway. All of us were waiting in an enclosed room with 5-6 others for like 30 minutes. I personally found this a little unnerving. If I were taking someone elderly (or otherwise at high risk) and they were feeling really anxious, I might drive to the drive-thru vaccination site at Yakima so they didn’t have to leave the car.
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Also, keep checking Costco vaccine page. I looked a couple of hours ago, and Costco again had J&J time slots open for this weekend in the greater Seattle area. Again, one must be currently eligible to register. Eligibility as of the day of appointment does not count.
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She asked if I could help look for opening at other local locations, with age 16+ opening tomorrow, so she didn’t have to wait and try to squeeze it in on campus before leaving. I found two within 15 minutes. So she’ll get her first Friday and second before the end of April.
As long as scheduled appointments hold, that leaves only my youngest (17, so Pfizer only, and only in Ohio for now). No luck there, so far.
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A friend suggested the Wolstein Center in Cleveland as being a good place to look for covid vaccine appointments @RichInPitt
This show a graphic of vaccine availability in PA. Notice that other than the urban areas, they are showing availability. PA is not opening up other than 1B, super frustrating imo
Can anyone in Ohio have any idea if residents of other states can get the vaccine in Ohio. One of my kids is in the Pittsburgh area and could get to Ohio easily enough if that’s allowed. My kids are big rule followers but I know they want to be vaccinated ASAP
Here’s the graphic for Washington state
Vaccine Finder for PA doesn’t really work well. I just used it looking for my DIL with Asthma to see if those “appointments available now” anywhere around us were truly available. They aren’t. Rite Aid, Weis, and CVS say so.
CVS has areas around Pitt (rural areas) that show availability if you’re looking in that area. For us, that would be a 4 hour drive one way.
MN also-what pharmacy chain?
He is going to CVS. They regularly update appt availability between 5-6 am. By 5:35 of that morning when everyone had become eligible they had changed the criteria as well.
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Yes they can go to Ohio 
I actually checked just to make sure it was OK for us to give out-of-state vaccines, which it is,” she said. “We kind of feel like whoever needs it, if they’re willing to come this way, we need to get people vaccinated. We’re all in this together.”
No one around me in PA is paying any attention to the phases anymore.
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It also seems to be limited to some retail pharmacies, though perhaps because those have the most easily scrapable appointment web sites.
It does show that, in California, claimed vaccine availability is highest in the central valley (other than Sacramento). In coastal urban areas, there is more availability in the southern part of the state. This seems to align with the typical demographic associations with vaccine enthusiasm and vaccine refusal.
Kid in Pittsburgh has no qualifying conditions so not eligible yet.
I sent him the article about vaccines in Ohio. They are 30-40 minutes from Ohio. So it would be fine to travel there.
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