BUFFALO, N.Y. — Getting a COVID-19 vaccine appointment is tough enough these days for many, and in turns out some people are hoarding appointments.
Some local health departments say this is contributing to delays in getting people vaccinated.
Hoarding vaccine appointments is something Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says the Erie County Health Department has seen, with people scheduling multiple first-dose appointments.
A spokesperson for Poloncarz calls vaccine appointment hoarding both greedy and selfish.
In a Twitter post, Poloncarz says people have been scheduling numerous appointments with the county and other vaccine providers. One person, Poloncarz says, scheduled seven first-dose vaccine appointments.
A county spokesperson says there have been people getting their shot and not cancelling other appointments they set up, leading to appointment gaps.
Hogging vaccine appointments is something other local health departments say they’ve seen.
"We have. That is a challenge, and we’ve talked about that a bit in our daily press briefing that we put out. We want to discourage folks from kind of vaccine shopping, I guess, might be a good term for it, trying to sign up for multiple appointments," said Paul Pettit, the public health director for Genesee and Orleans counties.
"If you are lucky enough and you get through and you have a spot we would encourage you to stick to that spot."
Pettit says if you happen to schedule more than one vaccine appointment for whatever reason, pick one as soon as possible and make sure you cancel the others.
"If you’re signed up at a pharmacy, multiple pharmacies potentially one of the state-sponsored mass vaccination sites and the county site, we can’t see that so we can only see our bucket at the moment, so again it's really more incumbent upon the individual to make sure they’re not doing that," Pettit said.
We asked Ere County for an interview on all this, but we weren’t granted one. The county reminds people to not only show up for their first dose appointment, but also to get their second dose.
Pettit says when they notice people hoarding vaccine appointments, waiting lists are used to make sure doses aren’t wasted.
"What we see a lot of times is maybe they get one for three or four weeks down the road, they just happen to get lucky and find one for next week, the reality is when you take up multiple spots you’re now a placeholder for all these different clinics," he said.