Utah County develops online scheduling tool in preparation for COVID-19 vaccine availability – Daily Herald

Utah County is developing a vaccination scheduling tool to prevent long lines at health clinics and limit physical human interaction once a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available to the public.

During a Utah County Commission work session on Wednesday, Eric Edwards, director of health promotion at the Utah County Health Department, told the commissioners that, in the beginning of the swine flu pandemic in 1999, health clinics experienced the huge long lines and there were frustrations about the supply and demand needs of vaccines.

It just wasnt well coordinated because we werent prepared at that point for anything like that, Edwards said. We hadnt experienced it before.

One of the greatest lessons learned from the swine flu pandemic, Edwards said, is the need to have some way of organizing appointments for individuals so that they could come and receive in a systematic way rather than having the Disneyland line effect.

After being instructed by the Utah Department of Health in April that it should start preparing for the eventual arrival of a vaccine for COVID-19, the county health department began working with Utah County Information Systems on a web-based application that would allow patients to schedule vaccination appointments online.

Such a tool would address the greatest challenges of large-scale vaccination, he said, including massive lines, physical distancing needs and appropriately vaccinating priority populations.

Allowing users to download and fill out their form beforehand speeds up the vaccination process and prevents the Health Department from having crowded waiting areas wherein patients are filling out forms, according to a health department presentation.

IS Director Patrick Wawro said the tool would help the health department administer vaccinations in a safe way during the pandemic, noting that patients dont have to come in contact with anyone to make this appointment, at all, until its time to actually come in and get their shot.

It really speeds up the process for the health department, Wawro said. And no longer do you have to come in and have them fill out a form at the side table or anything like that, theyve already done all that. So the idea here is that we dont have groups of people. Pretty much, as soon as you arrive, youre going to be ushered in in the next few minutes, which is what were after.

County programmers developed a prototype of the tool and did a soft launch with county employees, Edwards said. On Sept. 9, 56 county employees successfully set flu shot appointments using the tool, while 72 employees successfully registered the next day.

Weve actually already begun testing this application in a real way, said Wawro. Any county employee(s) last week were able to register to get their first flu shot of the year using this application because we wanted to test our capability and performance.

The next step, Edwards said, will be testing the tool with the public at community flu clinics, including at an upcoming drive-thru flu clinic in Spanish Fork.

But doing this, I dont think we can test it enough so that we truly can be prepared for whatevers to come with the eventual arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine, Edwards acknowledged.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told a United States Senate panel on Wednesday that he predicted a coronavirus vaccine would be generally available to the American public in the late second or third quarter of 2021.

Connor Richards covers government, the environment and south Utah County for the Daily Herald. He can be reached at crichards@heraldextra.com and 801-344-2599.

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Utah County develops online scheduling tool in preparation for COVID-19 vaccine availability - Daily Herald