By Tim Mastro

WILMINGTON — Delaware is expanding its access to the COVID-19 vaccine with events through some of its testing partners this week while the Delaware Department of Education is beginning vaccination registration for educators and school staff today.

The state’s efforts are designed to target people 65 and older who are at high-risk for the virus as well as low-income seniors in underserved communities.

The Delaware Emergency Management Agency and the Delaware Division of Public Health will partner with Curative Inc., one of the state’s COVID-19 testing partners, to begin vaccination events for Delawareans 65 and older who have registered on the waiting list. 

The first Curative events will be held this week in Dover, and DPH is inviting high-risk Delawareans 65 and older who have registered through the waiting list for those appointments. These initial Curative events are expected to vaccinate 750 this week, according to Gov. John Carney’s office. Seniors who are currently on the waiting list must receive an appointment in order to receive their vaccination.

The DPH is also partnering this week with Vault Health and community organizations to begin expanding access to the COVID-19 vaccine among low-income, underserved seniors. Vault is operating a vaccination event targeted toward that population today at Delaware Technical Community College in Wilmington.

The state extended invitations to this event through organizations including the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, the Latin American Community Center, Reach Riverside, and the Delaware Legislative Black Caucus. This event is already at capacity and no one without an appointment will be vaccinated, said Gov. Carney’s office.

The DOE’s vaccination events will only be open to those who work in public and private K-12 schools as well as district early childhood education centers. Child care-provider vaccination events are planned for early February. DOE is following a staged rollout that includes drive-thru clinics, on-site vaccination events at schools, and partnerships with Acme/Safeway Pharmacies.

Additional information and regular updates are to be posted to DOE’s COVID-19 vaccination site.

Planning is also underway for another DPH large vaccination event this coming weekend, which will also serve at least 2,000 Delaware seniors from the waiting list by appointment only. Information will be sent for that event to seniors on the waiting list. Delawareans 65 and older can still register for the waiting list at vaccinerequest.delaware.gov. Delawareans without computer access can call the COVID-19 Vaccine Call Center at 1-833-643-1715, and a call center operator will assist them with making the initial request.

Due to limited vaccine supply, the state’s efforts will focus primarily on administering first doses to eligible individuals. As supply allows, the state will prioritize second doses for 1A individuals at greatest risk of exposure to COVID-19.

“We know that to reach all of the current and future phases in our vaccination effort, we have to have multiple opportunities and approaches, and we have been planning for that,” said DPH Director Dr. Karyl Rattay in a statement Monday evening. “There will be no one right way to get your COVID vaccine, and we are building new access points to serve eligible Delawareans now and in the future.”

The state scheduled a Town Hall for 6 p.m. Tuesday in an effort to explain the new system and answer question from the public. Questions can be submitted to townhall@delaware.gov. The event will be streamed online and Gov. Carney’s Facebook page.

Delaware has recorded 68,995 vaccinations so far in its immunization information system DelVAX, although state officials have said that number is higher as the state is experiencing reporting delays.

A total of 11,154 individuals were vaccinated at drive-thru clinics hosted by Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles sites in Delaware City and Georgetown this past weekend. The DPH notes on its vaccine tracker it is working to enter data for those doses administered during the large-scale vaccination events.
According to the DPH, Delaware City’s DMV saw 500 vaccinations Friday, 3,318 Saturday and 2,396 Sunday. In Georgetown, there were 2,690 vaccines administered Saturday and 2,250 Sunday.

In addition to DPH, those events were staffed by hundreds of volunteers and teams from the state Department of Transportation and the Delaware Emergency Management Agency.

The DPH had originally reported 13,500 vaccinations were scheduled for the weekend clinics, which experienced significant delays on Saturday.

Appointments were provided to Phase 1B Delawareans 65 and older who had requested vaccination though the state’s new system.

The DPH said the weekend delays were caused by people arriving without an appointment, those with appointments who had not completed their pre-vaccination screening online before arriving and technology issues resulting from the cold temperatures.

Several process and traffic improvements implemented on Sunday designed to compensate for the long waits included:

• A separate area in Delaware City and separate lane in Georgetown for Phase 1A health care workers, who had not been registered through the online system and thus took longer to process.
• Additional laptops and IT personnel at the Delaware City site, along with generators to keep laptops and wi-fi systems charged. Georgetown switched to a paper-based system for Sunday, and manual data entry will be used to enter the information into the state’s immunization system.
• So as not to start the day with a backlog, Georgetown began vaccinations at 8:30 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. to accommodate individuals who arrived hours before their appointment time
• State troopers were added in both locations to assist with traffic flow.
• An email was sent early Sunday to individuals with Sunday appointments with instructions for completing the pre-registration forms. Staff and volunteers reported higher pre-registration completion rates Sunday, which sped up the process on site, requiring fewer lanes in Delaware City devoted to those with incomplete screening.

By 1 p.m., wait times were reported at approximately one hour in Delaware City and as low as 15 minutes in Georgetown, with traffic largely cleared from surrounding roads and highways at both locations, the DPH said. All vaccinations were completed Sunday by 4:45 p.m.

“The issues Saturday were not what we planned, not what we wanted to see, and certainly not what we wanted our residents to experience,” said Dr. Rattay said in a statement.

“Our hardworking volunteers and staff stayed more than three hours later than scheduled Saturday to vaccinate all those with appointments, and then the DPH team and our partners worked into the night to identify the issues and take steps to improve things for Sunday. Sunday went much more smoothly and was more the event we intended to have. It was a learning experience and, most importantly, we extended the first dose of vaccine protection to more than 11,000 Delawareans.”