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‘It’s Like Buying Bruce Springsteen Tickets’: The Hunt to Find a Vaccine Shot - The New York Times

‘It’s Like Buying Bruce Springsteen Tickets’: The Hunt to Find a Vaccine Shot - The New York Times

‘It’s Like Buying Bruce Springsteen Tickets’: The Hunt to Find a Vaccine Shot - The New York Times
Mar 03, 2021 2 mins, 4 secs

Throngs of people languishing without appointments are cold-calling pharmacies and driving from clinic to clinic, hunting for an extra dose.

They haunt pharmacies at the end of the day in search of an extra, expiring dose?

“There are people who feel desperate, and this is what they end up doing,” said Dr.

“It’s like buying Bruce Springsteen tickets,” said Maura Caldwell, who started a Minneapolis Vaccine Hunter Facebook group to help people navigate the search for appointments.

A doctor in Houston received national attention after he was fired for racing to inoculate 10 people — including his wife — before his vial of extra doses expired.

But health experts said the scavenger hunt for leftovers highlights the persistent disparities in America’s vaccination rollout, where access to lifesaving medicine can hinge on computer savvy, personal connections and a person’s ability to drop everything to snag an expiring dose.

She resorted to putting them on wait lists and hoping an extra slot opened up.

Gunnar Esiason, 29, has cystic fibrosis and said he was not about to wait until his New Hampshire vaccine appointment rolled around on April 21.

So he started showing up at Walgreens pharmacies and state-run vaccination sites — wherever there was a whiff of an extra vaccine, until he got a tip that a Dartmouth medical center had a few extras.

Franke signed up for eight different vaccine lists managed by doctors, Walgreens, Walmart, even a state lottery, but said nobody called.

But many in the crowd stuck around, and after a half-hour, the vaccination team allowed people 65 and older, teachers and emergency responders to get their shots.

Shah said he and his 79-year-old wife spent weeks languishing on their county’s official vaccination lists.

He would search fruitlessly for online appointments in the middle of the night, and put himself on informal wait lists kept by nearby pharmacies.

More people are looking, and the extras are dwindling as pharmacies and public-health agencies get better at matching each day’s available vials with their list of appointments.

Several cities have created special leftover lists to offer doses to police officers, teachers or older people.

Columbus, Ohio, said its “no waste” list of 250 people is full.

At Discount Drug Mart, a chain of 76 pharmacies in Ohio, the vaccination teams add up their doses against no-shows throughout the day, and start reaching out early to the 25 people who are on their rolling standby lists.

They get turned away from pharmacies whose wait lists are already full at 200 people deep

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