In early January, Vice President Kamala Harris rolled up her sleeve for a shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on live television and said, "I want to encourage everyone to get the vaccine. It is relatively painless, it happens really quickly. It is safe," she said.
The shot itself might be relatively painless but figuring out who is eligible to get the COVID vaccine, how to register for the vaccine and finding out where to get a COVID vaccine shot is not so easy.
So far, more than 42 million vaccine doses have been administered as of February 7th. After a disastrous initial vaccine rollout, the Biden administration promised last week to ramp up vaccine delivery to states and announced that many pharmacy chains across the country will begin vaccinating eligible people beginning February 11th. The announcement came as the United States surpassed 26 million COVID infections and more than 462,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Who is eligible for the COVID vaccine?
How do I register for the COVID vaccine?
Once you’ve determined that you or your family member is eligible to receive the vaccine, you have to make an appointment. Again, the state you live in determines how easy or difficult it is to register. In most cases you need a smart phone or a computer to sign up, patience and a lot of time in order to find an available appointment.
Once you visit your local state or county healthy department website, find out if it has an email list for vaccine updates and sign up for it! The same goes for local pharmacies, hospitals and health networks. Once you get an email or see a news report saying appointments are available, don’t wait to sign up. Because of limited supply, appoints fill up quickly. It took hours of refreshing my local COVID vaccine distribution website to get an appointment for my mom at a location 24 miles away from where we live in Los Angeles.
The Federal Government is working with states to help them distribute vaccines more efficiently, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said to the Washington Post on C-Span.
“You’re going to see much more involvement of the federal government in assisting than we saw in previous months when states, in so many respects, were left on their own,” he said.
Am I guaranteed a second dose of COVID vaccine?
The available vaccines, as of this writing, are the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that require 2 doses administered weeks apart. Once you have been given the first vaccine, you should be guaranteed an appointment for the second dose. Or not. The Baltimore Sun called Maryland’s vaccine rollout the “Hunger Games of health care” because there may not be enough vaccine for people to get their second dose.
But for those that get the first vaccine, the second dose is imperative. You’re not fully protected until 2 weeks AFTER you get the second dose, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
