City Pressed On Senior Vaccinations

Strike teams of city nurses plan to bring the Covid-19 vaccine directly to homebound seniors, as the health department proceeds with the state’s phased rollout of pandemic-era inoculations and the elderly navigate tech and transportation challenges to receiving their shots.

City Health Director Maritza Bond described those local plans for mobile, pop-up vaccination clinics Tuesday night during the latest bimonthly meeting of the Board of Alders public information caucus.

The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom, and can be watched in full here.

After a 20-minute presentation in which Bond described the history, safety, and efficacy of the two Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States so far, the alders peppered the city health director with questions about how the city will reach elderly residents who can’t make it out to a hospital or public health clinic or private medical practice to get vaccinated.

Monday marked the first official day of Phase 1b of the state’s Covid-19 plan. That means that Connecticut residents ages 75 and up can now schedule appointments to get vaccinated — pending availability of doses and time slots — at a host of healthcare sites across the city and state. Click here for a previous article about vaccination sites across the city, and about how to make a vaccination appointment if you’re 75 or older.

East Rock Alder Anna Festa broached the topic of seniors who are eligible to get vaccinated, but have trouble leaving their homes.

“A quick question about the homebound elderly and the disabled,” she said. ​“Is there a plan rolled out to get vaccines to them, or will they have to organize themselves” to get vaccinated?

Bond said that the city plans to put together ​“strike teams that will be going out to different facilities.”

She then said that, if an elderly resident lives in a nursing home or other assisted care facility, then they should be eligible for vaccination under Phase 1a. That means that CVS or Walgreens, acting as the state and federal government’s official partners on administering vaccinations in nursing homes, should be able to come to them with the doses.

“But what about private residents” who don’t live in nursing homes? Festa asked.

“Definitely reach out to me so we can see how we can help them,” Bond replied.

Prospect Hill/Newhallville/Dixwell Alder Steve Winter picked up where Festa left off — with the planned strike teams.

“Will those strike teams be visiting places like housing authority elderly facilities or former housing authority facilities” with large elderly populations? he asked.

He cited the Prescott Bush apartments on County Street. ​“That is exactly an example” of where a strike team would hit, Bond said.

Bond said she will be ​“putting out communications” on Wednesday to predominantly senior apartment complexes across the city to see how many residents they have who are 75 and over.

“Then we will actually come out, just like the flu clinic days, we will come out and provide vaccinations. We want to make sure that individuals 75 and over have access to vaccines.”

Click here to read a previous article about the city’s mass vaccination plan.

Trouble With VAMS

Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana pressed the city health director Tuesday on how confusing, redundant, and at times impenetrable the state’s Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS) registration form is.

That’s the form that the state Department of Public Health and certain participating healthcare providers, like the city Health Department and Fair Haven Community Health Care, require residents to sign up with before they can schedule a date and location to get vaccinated.

“I was trying to register my 90-year-old mother and it was very difficult,” Ferraro-Santana said.

She said she clicked through an email that Mayor Justin Elicker had sent out this past weekend about Phase 1b of the vaccination rollout. That led her to the VAMS form. She tried to find an appointment at a healthcare provider in New Haven County, let alone the city proper, and couldn’t find any available slots.

Only after going to the New Haven Independent did she find out that healthcare providers make appointments available based on capacity at any given site, and if you don’t see an appointment available at a particular location when you log in to check, that you either have to pick a different location or try again later.

“I didn’t want to have to drive to Old Saybrook in March to get hers done,” Ferraro-Santana said about the only available vaccine appointment she could find for her mom when looking this weekend. ​“I wanted to get hers done now.”

Ultimately, the alder said, she returned to the VAMS site on Monday and was able to find an appointment in New Haven at a sooner date.

Ferraro-Santana isn’t the only New Havener to criticize VAMS as a needlessly confusing registration system.

In separate interviews, Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde said VAMS is ​“a bit complicated and it takes time,” and has proven to be one of the biggest hurdles yet to getting residents signed up for vaccinations at her clinic, in part because the form is in English only; 77-year-old East Rocker Lary Bloom described trying to navigate the online form as analogous to ​“being led down a blind alley”; Fair Haven Heights resident Patricia Kane forwarded her VAMS confirmation email (pictured above) and asked incredulously, ​“Do you believe this process? … We can kill people remotely by drones, but we can’t get them vaccinated”; still another New Haven senior told the Independent, ​“I think of myself as fairly computer literate but the process I endured would surely challenge someone who isn’t.”

The Independent also heard from a Westville resident whose husband registered through VAMS to get vaccinated at the city’s Meadow Street clinic. He found out Monday afternoon by text message and email that his Tuesday appointment had been bumped out a day because of a holiday-induced delayed shipment of vaccine doses. On Tuesday night, he received another text message and email saying his appointment had been cancelled altogether. He was ultimately able to get back on the VAMS site and schedule a new appointment for Wednesday.

“It’s ludicrous to think that the 75+ cohort is accustomed to communicating via text messages, QR codes and password-protected platforms for critical and time-sensitive communications,” his wife said about the process.

On Tuesday, Bond commiserated with Ferraro-Santana’s frustrations with VAMS.

“The system is a federal system that we all do not like,” she said. ​“It’s a cumbersome system. But we are at the beck and call of this system that we are all required to use.”

She said that eligible residents who do not want to work through VAMS can call 2 – 1‑1 or 877 – 918-2224 to receive help over the phone with setting up a vaccination appointment.

Bond also pointed out that some participating healthcare providers — like Yale New Haven Health and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center — do not require residents to use VAMS in order to make a vaccination appointment.

Click here or call 1 – 833-ASK-YNHH (275‑9644) to schedule an appointment through YNHH’s own website, or call 203 – 503-3000 to schedule an appointment at Cornell Scott Hill Health Center.

“It is cumbersome,” Bond repeated about VAMS. ​“Bear with us. We do not have control of the system that we are being mandated to use. We are just the implementers at the local level.”