Montgomery County hopes single-use appointment links, passwords will stop COVID vaccine ‘line-jumpers’

• Aaron Moselle/WHYY
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Aaron Moselle is a general assignment reporter for NewsWorks, filing stories for both web and radio.
  While you can find him at the courthouse or a school funding rally, he also spends a good chunk of his time writing about issues in Northwest Philadelphia, where he was born and raised. (Yes. Mount Airy is part of the city.)
  Before arriving at WHYY in 2010, Aaron was a freelance writer for a collection of community newspapers and alternative weeklies.
  He still can't get over the fact that he can walk to so many sights and sounds from his home base in South Philly.

 Emma Lee / WHYY

Nicholas Drago, a physical therapist form Ardmore, Pa., gets his COVID-19 vaccination at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pa. on Jan. 6, 2021.

Starting next week, Montgomery County will begin sending individualized, single-use appointment links to people eligible to schedule a time to receive their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Under the new system, residents will have to enter a password supplied by the county to make a vaccination appointment.

The announcement comes after the county learned that people were sharing their appointment links with family and friends who are not currently eligible for inoculation under the state’s vaccination rollout plan.

“This is not ethical or moral and it needs to stop,” said County Commissioner Val Arkoosh during a virtual briefing on Wednesday. “We are committed to delivering the vaccine in an efficient and equitable way.”

The county has also launched a COVID-19 hotline for residents to ask general questions about the highly-contagious virus. The hotline will have a function for people to pre-register for a vaccine appointment, potentially sometime next week, said Arkoosh.

The hotline will be available Monday through Saturday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. The number is 833-875-3967.

“It could easily take up to 12 weeks or longer before you actually hear from us about scheduling an appointment,” said Arkoosh.

Doses of the vaccine continue to be “extremely scarce” in the county.

A delivery of roughly 3,900 first doses and 5,800 second doses are expected to arrive this week, said Arkoosh.

Montgomery County is home to more than 830,000 people.

WHYY is the leading public media station serving the Philadelphia region, including Delaware, South Jersey and Pennsylvania. This story originally appeared on WHYY.org.

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