ROCKVILLE, Md. — Retired teacher and lawyer Donna McDowell of Montgomery County was hopeful the COVID-19 vaccine would be available for her vulnerable husband after Gov. Larry Hogan announced people 75 and older were eligible to receive their first dose.
Instead, she found the registration process misleading, bewildering, frustrating and infuriating. Her husband is still unprotected, even as Maryland has said group 1C residents --anyone 65 or older -- are now eligible to be vaccinated.
“We’ve signed up with virtually every site you can sign up with,” McDowell said. “It's a matter of life and death and it really does produce anxiety.”
McDowell’s 75-year-old husband, Dennis, is at-risk with six co-morbid conditions, including diabetes. He’s in group 1B for vaccination, according to Maryland state guidelines.
Despite typing in their Montgomery County address, the couple was steered to Prince George’s County by a state website that allowed them to book an appointment for this week. However, it was canceled Monday as Prince George's County began turning away anyone who doesn’t live or work there.
RELATED: New vaccine registration requirements in Prince George's County as non-residents book appointments
Still hopeful, McDowell heard Giant Food Pharmacies had gone live with appointments in Maryland.
“By the time I got on the Giant site after I found out we weren't going to get the shots in PG, I was on there for six and a half hours, almost seven, only to find there was nothing left,” McDowell said. “On top of that, yesterday my kids were both on computers trying to get us into one of the hospital sites for an appointment and never got in. I kind of feel like I'm never going to get in. I just feel really helpless."
McDowell said she and her high-risk husband are now reduced to hunkering down at home hoping for more vaccines and wishing for what she called a unified response so people aren’t trapped in a bewildering maze of websites.
Meanwhile, another Montgomery County resident who was able to receive a vaccination by driving two hours to Caroline County, Maryland said it was only a matter of luck his trip worked out.
Dr. William Galston, a 75-year-old public policy researcher at the Brookings Institution who’s become an expert on the state-by-state response to vaccination, said he too was steered outside Montgomery County by a state vaccination website that allowed him to book an appointment in Caroline County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore despite his address.
Galston said that when he arrived on Tuesday morning, local health authorities told him the vaccine was only for residents. A short time later a vaccinator came to Galston’s car and said an extra dose was available, and he received his first dose.
It was exactly the kind of bewildering issue Galston has been writing about for the Brookings Institution.
“People are scared and they're frustrated, and delay is harder to bear with the end in sight,” Galson said. “Until there's a better balance between supply and demand, an element of competition is unavoidable, and an element of resentment or at least suspicion is also unavoidable. But I think we can do a heck of a lot better than we're doing, and doing better starts with absolute transparency about what's going on.”
Galston is calling on the Biden administration to immediately create a federal dashboard showing how much vaccine is being produced and where it's being sent.