Sonoma County cancels thousands of vaccine appointments due to website error

A rush of thousands of people seeking vaccination against COVID-19 swamped Sonoma County inoculation appointments set up this week to serve elders 75 or older, but about 85% of appointments were canceled as of Friday after county staff realized those who had signed up were too young, officials said.

The rush of ineligible sign-ups prompted officials to delay a planned vaccination clinic for teachers, with another opportunity for agricultural workers and others scheduled in early February in flux, as the county focuses on vaccinating about 37,000 people age 75 or older — a group most vulnerable to the gravest outcomes of the disease.

The county will next prioritize anyone 65 or older, adding about another 65,000 people to the pool who are eligible to be vaccinated.

The county’s vaccine chief, Dr. Urmila Shende, said the county acted quickly to identify the problem. She said she believed the county will be able to inoculate these age groups quickly, though she couldn’t provide a specific timeline.

Sonoma County Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins asked for the public’s patience at a news briefing Friday, and she compared the pandemic to a mass casualty event in which it is crucial to first serve those most vulnerable.

“The people older than 75 in our community are the ones who are disproportionately dying, are the ones who are at most risk of death from COVID-19, that absolutely makes sense to prioritize them first and foremost for the vaccine,” Hopkins said. “I know that it’s frustrating.”

County residents in January contracted COVID-19 in the greatest numbers so far since the pandemic hit more than 10 months ago, a troubling truth that coincides this week with business reopenings and the end of statewide stay-home orders in place since December.

With an average of 237 cases each day since Jan. 1, the new year has continued a trend begun in December when infections rose sharply, nearly tripling compared to November.

The surge has coincided with the debut of the first vaccinations for the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 3.2 million Californians and killed nearly 40,000.

Friday’s vaccine appointment breakdown is another example of the challenges faced by vaccination efforts, one beset best by dose shortages and disorganization across the state.

The county intended the Rohnert Park clinic — one of four in a state pilot program — to vaccinate only people who were 75 and older who had disabilities, lacked access to technology or are otherwise disadvantaged, Shende said. To reach its target demographic, the county reached out to “affiliated senior organizations in the community” to get older folks signed up, especially those who may have been incapable of registering themselves, she said.

The process began smoothly enough Sunday, with the county filling appointment slots by invitation only.

But after the county distributed a link to schedule a vaccination appointment — publicly accessible but not otherwise advertised — one or more people forwarded the link to somebody else, and by late Wednesday, the link to the sign-up page ended up on social media, county spokesman Paul Gullixson said. He noted that the sign-up site’s default setting matched the state’s rules, which sets 65 as the cut-off age, and Sonoma County’s preference wasn’t immediately reflected.

“We had given out these invitations with very strict instructions to not forward,” Shende said. “And somebody — it happens — but somebody ended up forwarding it to a friend, and so on, and we know how that goes.”

That led to a deluge of sign-ups, with 7,000 to 8,000 people signing up through most of February — but 85% were people who have not turned 75, Shende said. Registration for a vaccine appointment requires a date of birth to be provided, so it was easy to quickly identify who is and is not eligible, she said.

Whether trying to jump the line or sincerely confused about eligibility, those folks need not appear at their previously scheduled times. Their appointments have been canceled, and Shende did not expect difficulties in finding people to take their place.

“It will not be a problem,” she said. “Because we have 36,000 people who need the appointments. ... It will fill up.”

OptumServe will be notifying each person about the cancellations. But they are having challenges getting the notifications out. They will likely go out over the weekend.

The same problem affected sign-ups for vaccinations at the Oakmont Safeway clinic, Shende said. Appointments opened up at 10:30 a.m. Friday but most initial bookings had been made by people under 75, she said.

Michael Canar, 80, and his 72-year-old wife got their first shots Thursday at the Rohnert Park clinic, before county officials realized ineligible people had signed up for the vaccine. Nothing was amiss when the Oakmont couple arrived to be vaccinated. When they signed up, amid the statewide swirl of information, they thought that sign-ups were available for folks 65 and older.

Canar said the couple have follow-up appointments scheduled for three weeks from now. He said he feels bad for people who made appointments only to have them canceled, and he added that if his wife was deemed ineligible for a second shot at their follow-up, he’d try to give her his.

“I can’t imagine they’re going to give her a shot and then not let her get a booster,” Canar said.

The sudden change in policy forced the Sonoma County Office of Education to cancel the launch of its vaccination program that was slated to begin Monday with shots for about 150 school staff. SCOE, which had been allotted 1,100 of the Moderna vaccine, had already directed individual districts to alert employees 65 and older to make appointments next week before being forced to pull the plug Friday afternoon. More than 500 appointments had been booked before SCOE officials were told the vaccines would not be made available.

“We understand the county’s need to prioritize our most vulnerable population, but are very disappointed in receiving this last-minute notice after we had already scheduled and raised the hopes of hundreds of school staff in our community,” Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools Steve Herrington said in a statement. “This is another example of the type of setbacks and changes in guidance that schools have faced throughout this pandemic.”

More than 17,200 people are categorized as school employees in Sonoma County — about 1,100 of them are 65 or older. It was those employees — teachers, custodians, front office staff — who per state order had been prioritized and were slated to get the first doses allotted to SCOE Monday.

“The decision to postpone the vaccination clinics for teachers emerged out of a need for consistency in our countywide commitment to vaccinating those 75 and older first,” Gullixson said.

A separate clinic for food and agriculture workers scheduled for Feb. 8 also may be postponed, Shende said: “We will see where we are in our goal trying to reach our over-75 (population) and see when they will be able to start.”

Deputy Public Health Officer Dr. Kismet Baldwin said she was “cautiously optimistic” about the coming weeks because case data appears to show the rate of new cases slowing as the month nears its end.

“That’s not to say we’re in great shape,” Baldwin said. “But it’s starting to come down, slowly but surely.”

As of Thursday, 22,749 local residents had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and another 7,033 people had received both required doses, according to the latest county data reported to the California Immunization Registry.

Those numbers do not include vaccines being given to residents and staff at elder care facilities, which are being administered by pharmacies like CVS or Walgreens through a program managed by the federal government.

The county has roughly 5,500 beds at different elder care facilities, though not all are occupied.

Those facilities have been the site of dire outbreaks of the virus and a key driver in deaths. The virus has taken its greatest toll among elders in group residential places. In Sonoma County, nearly 60% of the people who have died were residents of skilled nursing or residential care facilities.

Shende said she believed residents and staff at local facilities should be fully inoculated by Tuesday.

The county has reported that 260 Sonoma County residents have died from complications of COVID-19, including nine deaths reported this week.

Those nine people include a man between 18 and 49 years old who died Jan. 16 at a local hospital, county officials said.

Among the others, there were three men between 50 and 64 years old who died as well as three women and two men all 64 or older. Four of these individuals had been living in skilled nursing facilities. All but one man died in a hospital.

In the first 28 days of January, 6,623 county residents had tested positive for COVID-19, compared to 6,736 in all of December and 2,633 new cases in November.

Staff Writer Kerry Benefield contributed reporting. You can reach Staff Writers Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com and Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com.