GREENSBORO, N.C. — Five thousand people managed to land one of Guilford County's vaccine appointments for the week but health officials said Wednesday they know many more are still trying to get a slot.
"The health department is not keeping doses away. We are not prolonging the process and we are trying to get it out as soon as possible," Dr. Iulia Vann said.
Dr. Vann is the Director of the Guilford County Department of Public Health. She along with Emergency Management Director Don Campbell gave an update on vaccination efforts Wednesday.
Campbell said more than 20,000 calls jammed the county's vaccine appointment phone line Tuesday. The appointment website got 10,000 hits.
Many of them never got through.
"The demand continues to outweigh the supply," Dr. Vann said, "I know that there's a lot of frustration when you're not able to get through and when you're not able to make an appointment."
With so many seeking vaccines, health officials are warning of scam calls targeting people with fake appointments.
"We do make outbound phone calls to offer appointments to individuals but that number will always be a local area code. It will always be a 336 area code with the 641 prefix coming from our county exchange," Campbell said.
Campbell said calls from Guilford County will always identify themselves.
The big red flag is if the person on the other end of the line asks for payment or insurance information.
Guilford County will never ask for those details when scheduling a vaccine appointment.
This week, the county got a total of 7,725 vaccine doses from the state but about 2,700 of those went to Cone Health.
The remaining 5,025 doses went to first vaccine appointments scheduled for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
58 percent of those patients are white, 38 percent are African American and two percent are Asian American.
Dr. Vann said the county wants vaccine access to be equitable.
The county's numbers are somewhat more even than the state's where 81 percent of vaccine patients are white, 12 percent are African American and three percent are Asian American.
"It is obvious that our intentional approach to reach out to our historically marginalized communities is making an impact in Guilford County," Dr. Vann said.
Dr. Vann also wants to make sure people keep appointments once they schedule them.
She said rescheduling or swapping appointments disrupts clinics.
"We strongly discourage this process and this trend since we want, we just want to make sure that everybody has a very good experience at our sites and there's no wait time," Dr. Vann said.
The county expects at least 1,950 vaccine doses from the state during the next two weeks but they could get more.
Dr. Vann said there are about 80,000 people age 65 and up in the county and it will take time to vaccinate all of them with small weekly supplies.
14,009 people have gotten their first dose in Guilford County since vaccines arrived in late December. Only 535 people have gotten both of their doses.