‘Setting the entire plan back’: Sacramento County calls out COVID vaccine line cutters
Sacramento County health officials issued a stern warning this week for those who don’t yet qualify for a hard-to-get COVID-19 vaccine: Stop cutting in line.
“When someone books a vaccination appointment under false pretenses, that is one less appointment for someone who does qualify — setting the entire plan back,” county health officials said on their website.
Due to limited supplies, the county is only vaccinating health workers, those older than 65 and essential workers in a few sectors including emergency services and education.
The county says those who don’t qualify right now for a jab will be turned away if they don’t bring verification of their employment with them to their vaccine appointments at county-operated clinics. County spokeswoman Kimberly Nava said those in the education field, for instance, are asked to bring “a work ID or other verification.”
“This could be a paycheck stub or a letter from their supervisor on school letterhead,” Nava told The Sacramento Bee.
But some who received the vaccine at the county’s clinic at Cal Expo say they weren’t asked for their work credentials.
Jessica Jones, who does in-home therapy for people with special needs, said she had paperwork from her Sacramento County company when she drove up to the first clinic at Cal Expo, but all the workers asked for was her driver’s license.
She said the email from her employer that sent her the link to sign up for a vaccine appointment could have been widely shared, and could then be used by anyone to exploit the system if the workers weren’t verifying whether the people were actually essential workers.
“It’s kind of weird that they didn’t check,” she said. “I could just give this information to somebody, and they could just make an appointment and go.”
Still, other than getting denied a shot, there are no consequences for trying to cut in line by logging on to the county’s vaccination website under false pretenses. So the county is instead appealing to their goodwill.
“It wastes your time, staff time and everyone’s in line, and, most importantly, you will have taken one of a precious few appointments from someone in our community who does meet criteria,” the county’s announcement reads.
The announcement posted Tuesday came the day after The Sacramento Bee approached the health department with questions about how many people had been turned away from the county’s vaccine clinics because they didn’t qualify for the shots.
Nava said the county had no way of knowing “because they have a variety of reasons someone might be turned away.”
“It wouldn’t necessarily be because they are ineligible,” she said in an email. “It could be that they were there on the wrong day, never had an appointment, went to the wrong location, etc.”
Trying to deter people from cutting in line comes as Sacramento’s vaccination efforts are off to a slower start than the state as a whole.
Sacramento for weeks has trailed the statewide per-capita rate of injections by 10% to 15%, according to a Bee analysis of California Department of Public Health data. Those include shots administered by the county as well as by hospital systems, such as Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, and through federal partnerships with retail pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens.
State data on Tuesday showed the county’s roughly 1.5 million people had received a total of about 312,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna brand vaccines, which each require two shots. That’s about 20 doses for every 100 people. Neighboring Placer County has seen close to 30 injections per 100 residents.
Line cutters — those who sign up for a vaccine appointment slot knowing they do not meet eligibility requirements but hoping to sneak a jab — are distinct from “vaccine chasers” — those who camp outside of clinics hoping that, at the end of the day, they might receive one that the clinic would otherwise have to discard.
Guidance from the state health department has made clear that providers “may offer doses promptly to people in lower priority groups” when those doses are either “about to expire according to labeling instructions” or have already “been thawed and would otherwise go to waste.”
Experts agree that in order to vaccinate a large enough share of the population to return life to normal, a COVID-19 vaccine dose injected into an arm is better than one thrown in the trash.
This story was originally published March 3, 2021 at 1:44 PM.
