Thread by @annezinkmd

10 things to know about the vaccination process

1.Our goal is to get vaccines out quickly, efficiently and equitably.

2. It looks different in every community but these may include large vaccine clinics, hospital clinics, vaccines at both primary care and specialty care clinics, door to door vaccination, pharmacy-based vaccine, mobile teams, and the appointment scheduling system.

3.The website appointment finder that is linked to from covidvax.alaska.gov, (the full site is dhss.alaska.gov/dph/epi/id/pag…) only links you to community sites offering vaccines to the public (like the testing website).

4. Some sites on that map are using the state-supported scheduling system because they wanted that support. The PrepMod site, myhealth.alaska.gov, will only give you a subset of the appointments that use this software for scheduling.

5.Once you start to make an appointment, the waitlist, the confirmation emails, the times and locations are determined by that site.

6.More appointments and vaccine clinics get added every day

7.If you miss your tier on the day your tier’s vaccination opens up – more come out all the time, keep checking. For example Anchorage announced today at 6 pm a mass vaccine clinic will open for scheduling. (covidvax.alaska.gov)

8.Once there are extra appointments that are open regularly, and there is more vaccine, we will start the process of moving to the next tier. We won’t go to the next tier until much of the demand for the last tier is meet

9.The two current vaccines take a LOT of special handling, so the distribution has to be very careful, this is what makes this different than flu vaccine or mass smallpox vaccinating efforts. New vaccines may make this easier in the future, but this is what we have now.

10.The vaccine is free, however, an administrative fee may be charged to insurance. The online process helps speed up vaccination.

11.We are here to help, but this will take all of us. Call 1-907-646-3322, leave a message and a member of the team will call you back. Also check in with your local public health office, primary care provider, emergency operation center for more close to home information.