{"id":48878,"date":"2021-02-02T21:02:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T04:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-do-you-find-out-if-youre-eligible-for-a-covid-19-vaccine\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T04:02:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T04:02:26","slug":"how-do-you-find-out-if-youre-eligible-for-a-covid-19-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/how-do-you-find-out-if-youre-eligible-for-a-covid-19-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you find out if you\u2019re eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Volunteers
Volunteers fill syringes with the COVID-19 vaccine Jan. 23 at the communitywide COVID-19 vaccination site at the La Plata County Fairgrounds. Notifications about vaccine availability, eligibility and appointments are available through San Juan Basin Public Health.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

If you find the process by which residents of La Plata County receive notifications about the COVID-19 vaccine confusing, you\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the reason it\u2019s complicated to begin with is that there are a lot of different vaccine providers,\u201d said Brian Devine, deputy incident commander for COVID-19 at San Juan Basin Public Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People are encouraged to sign up for notifications from SJBPH at sjbpublichealth.org\/coronavirus<\/a>, but individual health care providers may also send out separate notifications to patients with whom they have a history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state has assigned the general public age 70 and older primarily to hospitals \u2013 although that\u2019s a very large group of people, so pharmacies, other health care providers, federally qualified health centers, they\u2019re all assisting hospitals with that population. And the hospitals get about 50% of the doses made available by the state,\u201d Devine said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very large group of people, and it\u2019s a very large group of providers to accommodate them. That\u2019s the first reason that some people are probably finding it confusing.\u201d<\/p>\n

San Juan Basin Public Health\u2019s notification system acts as a centralized means of receiving news about COVID-19 vaccine availability and eligibility, but it does not directly set up appointments for patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do is send a weekly notification email to anybody who has signed up for it with all of the available appointments for the week,\u201d Devine said. \u201cAnd, in fact, we include providers that may not have available appointments for the week because we\u2019re always moving vaccine around in order to maximize the number of available appointments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The email consolidates information about who is eligible for the vaccine, how much of it has been made available to La Plata and Archuleta counties, and how to make appointments at the enrolled providers that it lists. If a patient is eligible, he or she must then contact one of those providers directly to make an appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think the centralized notification system that we provide is a good one-stop shop for vaccine eligibility information and links to appointments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Colorado launched a vaccine hotline at 1-877-CO VAX CO (1-877-268-2926). According to a news release <\/a>from the state, staff members at the call center are trained to answer COVID-19 vaccine-related questions, provide information about vaccine providers across the state and give general information about COVID-19 in multiple languages.<\/p>\n

The hotline can take information for people who don\u2019t have access to the internet or are not comfortable using it to receive notifications, Devine said. Every health care provider administering the vaccine is also required to provide a phone number, which SJBPH makes available.<\/p>\n

SJBPH can also assist in taking information on people seeking the vaccine by phone, he said. The health department\u2019s number is 247-5702 in La Plata County and 264-2409 in Archuleta County.<\/p>\n

The available appointments are getting filled very quickly, Devine said. For the last two weeks, every appointment slot listed in SJBPH\u2019s notification email has been claimed within an hour of notifications being sent out. Appointments are first come, first served among eligible patients. He said speed at which the appointments are claimed will lighten as vaccine supply improves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good that the community is interested in getting vaccinated as quickly as possible,\u201d he said, because it hastens the process of immunizing the community and ensures none of the vaccine is going to waste.<\/p>\n

Distributing vaccines<\/div>\n

SJBPH is the official enrolled provider \u2013 meaning the vaccine has been allocated to it to vaccinate eligible patients under its medical license and insurance \u2013 for the volunteer-based effort at the La Plata County Fairgrounds every Saturday. SJBPH will also provide the vaccines with its own staff members once it has the staff capacity to do so, he said.<\/p>\n

Under the current phase of COVID-19 vaccine distribution (1B.1), SJBPH and other local public health agencies throughout the state have been assigned 10% of the vaccines available and tasked with inoculating moderate-risk health care workers and first responders. SJBPH has been doing this through Animas Surgical Hospital and Pagosa Springs Medical Center, which have volunteered to assist with that responsibility, Devine said.<\/p>\n

La Plata and Archuleta counties are on pace for the schedule announced by Gov. Jared Polis on Friday. People in the 65-to-69 age category as well as teachers, child care providers and student-facing support staff members in schools will become eligible for the vaccine Feb. 8. Appointments for the general population will work the same as they are currently, Devine said, while school districts will work directly with providers and teachers will make appointments through the districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing we\u2019ve learned in this pandemic is to stay flexible and expect changes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He noted that Friday was the first day SJBPH had received a preview of what future supply and eligibility looks like from the state \u2013 a good sign of things to come. He said the state\u2019s schedule is subject to change, especially if and when a vaccine from a third developer is approved in the coming months and supply increases as a result.<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vaccination notifications available by email and phone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,291],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-vaccines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48878"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}