Communicable disease supervisor Jill Johnson draws out doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Deschutes County Public Health Department in Bend, Ore., Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021. Communities across the state have been developing their own approaches to distributing vaccines.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
While overall reports of the COVID-19 mass vaccination clinics in Eugene have been favorable, Lane County Public Health ran into complications recently when a registration link was shared on social media.
This is how the process is supposed to work: The county prioritizes organizations based on the number and types of people served. Then they send out an invitation with a link to register for a vaccine.
Lane County Public Health spokesperson Jason Davis said that someone posted that link last week to social media where anyone could use it.
Related: What will it take to vaccinate Oregon?
“And we had people who were not in 1A, probably not even fitting into 1B, registering. For some people, it was absolutely inadvertent,” Davis said. “They just saw the link and an opportunity to get vaccinated and jumped on it. A lot of people have been proactive in cancelling those mistaken registrations.”
Davis said some people did show up at the mass vaccination clinics. But if they were not on the list, they were turned away. He urged patience and grace as the county works to follow COVID-19 vaccination guidelines.
As of Tuesday, 19,641 Lane County residents had received the vaccine.