About one in five residents who pre-registered for COVID-19 vaccines at one of the state’s mass vaccination sites appear to have gone elsewhere to receive their doses.
Gov. Charlie Baker said Wednesday that about 300,000 of the roughly 1.5 million adults who filled out a pre-registration form withdrew afterward, indicating they were able instead to find a slot at a pharmacy, regional collaborative or another location.
“That says to us they went and got an appointment somewhere else,” Baker said.
For those who are eligible to receive vaccines, he said pre-registration typically it takes two to three weeks after registration to receive an alert about an appointment, depending on location.
He also said “a bunch of people” do not book the first appointment when alerted by the system but secure it on a second offering.
“Pre-registration, we’ve discovered, for a lot of people is what I would call the safety valve: they pre-register, and while they wait to hear back from the pre-registration system, they continue to chase appointments,” Baker said.
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