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Frustrations Mount over Vaccine Shortages in New Orleans

Matt Haines

   NEW ORLEANS - Ian Farrell was just two days away from getting the first
   of two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. He was looking forward, he said,
   to a major step toward life returning to normal.

   So he admitted it was frustrating when he learned, without warning,
   that his appointment had been pushed back to March.

   "Part of it was that I was so close," Farrell told VOA, explaining his
   frustration, "and part of it is that my coworkers and I do work that's
   not safe for us to do without being vaccinated."

   A 44-year-old social worker focused on community mental health, Farrell
   must go out and visit patients in their homes, a risky undertaking
   during a pandemic.

   Social workers are renowned for their patience and understanding, and
   Farrell considers himself a nice guy.

   "But, yeah, I kind of snapped when this poor woman called and told me
   my vaccination was being pushed back two months," he said. "I can't
   imagine what other, less-kind people were saying to her."

   Tens of thousands of calls like the one Farrell received have taken
   place across Louisiana in the past week. At Ochsner Health, the largest
   nonprofit health care system in the state, more than 21,000 people were
   notified that their appointments for COVID-19 vaccines had been
   canceled or postponed.

   Americans across the country are eager to receive their vaccines so
   they can safely return to the world they knew pre-COVID. But a slow
   national rollout has frustrated the process.

   "We're ready to go," said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the New
   Orleans Health Department and the face of the city's fight against the
   virus. "People want this vaccine, but we just aren't getting enough
   doses to keep up."

   Supply and demand

   The Louisiana Department of Health (LDOH) receives doses from the
   federal government and then is responsible for distributing them to
   qualified health care providers, including hospitals, clinics and
   pharmacies across the state. Those providers then administer the
   vaccines to patients.

   "By far the biggest challenge is the small number of doses being made
   available to us [from the federal government]," said Mindy Faciane,
   public information officer for the LDOH. In Louisiana, there are
   889,000 people in the tiers currently eligible to receive a COVID
   vaccine, which include health care workers and those at least 70 years
   old. As of Thursday, only 38% of that number had received their first
   vaccine dose, according to LDOH.

   But that hasn't stopped thousands of New Orleanians from trying to find
   coveted appointments for themselves and their loved ones. Entire
   Facebook groups, such as the 600-member "NOLA Vaccine Hunters," are
   dedicated to crowdsourcing information on where the next available
   appointments might be.

   Andi Robinson also used social media to reach out to friends asking for
   information on where she could get her 82-year-old grandmother an
   appointment. Robinson said her grandmother has been extremely cautious
   during the pandemic, avoiding the grocery store and listening to church
   services on the phone instead of going in person. She even asked family
   members to change their clothes upon entering the house during the
   virus' early days.

   "I was worried about her and what the virus could do to her because of
   her age," Robinson said, "so as soon as the vaccine was made available,
   I wanted to get her one."

   She said it took more than a week of busy signals, frustrating computer
   searches and wait lists before Robinson was finally able to find an
   appointment for her grandmother at a hospital in February.

   But she recently received a call from a local Walgreens pharmacy, where
   she was on a wait list, notifying her that a spot came available for
   her.

   "And she got her first dose of the vaccination," Robinson said. "It
   wasn't as smooth as we hoped, but I feel like it could have been much
   worse."

   Being intentional about equity

   "Obviously we need to make sure it's not just the people with the most
   tech-savvy grandkids who are getting the vaccine," said Dr. Avegno of
   the New Orleans Health Department.

   Louisiana is one of the most racially diverse states in America. In New
   Orleans, for example, about 60% of the population is Black.

   But the pandemic has not affected all demographics equally. African
   Americans account for three of every four coronavirus deaths in the
   city. Experts believe this is because of interrelated factors such as
   poverty and a disparity in access to affordable healthy food and health
   care compared with white residents.

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