A chaotic weekend that initially saw the Island get shut out of vaccine doses culminated with the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital filling 900 appointments for the coming 10 days in just over an hour, hospital officials confirmed Monday morning.
The 900 shots from the state are approximately half the number of doses hospital officials expected for the Island when prepping last week. Clinics and available appointments are running from March 1 through March 10. The Monday clinic was only in the morning.
The hospital does not expect to receive any new vaccine doses until its next state shipment, scheduled for March 10, a spokesman confirmed Monday.
In an email to the Gazette, hospital spokesman Marissa Lefebvre said the second round of appointments for eligible Islanders 65 and older and those with two or more underlying conditions opened at 8 a.m. Monday and were full by 9:15 a.m. “Scheduling went very well,” Ms. Lefebvre said in the email.
But Monday’s signups came after a head-spinning chain of events Saturday and Sunday that led to widespread confusion among Islanders looking to schedule their vaccine shots.
On Saturday morning the hospital had originally planned to open availability for about 2,100 vaccine appointments for the coming week.
Those plans were thrown into flux when the hospital received no vaccine from the state Department of Public Health by Friday evening. At 8 a.m. Saturday the hospital announced on its website that only had 100 appointments would be available for the week, catching the public by surprise.
The 100 appointments filled in four minutes.
Clinics had run smoothly throughout the previous week until the Saturday morning frustration.
Then on Sunday afternoon, hospital officials changed course again and said the state had confirmed 1,170 doses for the upcoming week, March 1 through March 5. Vaccine signups would resume Monday at 8 a.m. Nine hundred of the doses would be allocated for newly eligible Islanders; the other 270 doses would be reserved for second-shot vaccinations.
In an emailed statement Sunday, hospital CEO Denise Schepici thanked Islanders for their patience and reiterated that the lack of vaccine supply was a statewide issue.
“We are in communication with the state on a daily, if not hourly basis, to stay current on the supply chain challenges,” Ms. Schepici said. “This latest news from the state is promising that more doses will continue to come our way.”
The Sunday announcement also said there could be a delay with the state’s supply of the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, possibly forcing Islanders to reschedule second-shot appointments.
But a hospital spokesman said in an update email Monday that the state confirmed enough doses for all the second dose Moderna appointments scheduled in the current week, and that there would be no cancellations or delays.
The hospital does not expect to receive any more vaccine until March 10, Ms. Lefebvre confirmed in a follow up email to the Gazette, explaining why appointments had been scheduled 10 days in advance, rather than five.
Ms. Schepici said on Sunday the hospital remains committed to ensuring all eligible Islanders get vaccinated.
“We appreciate everyone’s understanding and we want you to know our team is working very hard, within the limitations we face, to vaccinate our community as soon as people are eligible,” she said.
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