Skipping The Line: How Some NYers Get Vaccinated Without An Appointment

Outside the entrance of a public health clinic in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, people sometimes start lining up as early as 7 a.m. and wait outside in the cold until dusk—just for the chance to receive their first shot of COVID-19 vaccine. The people here at NYC Health + Hospitals/Cumberland don’t necessarily meet the eligibility requirements to get vaccinated. They’re just willing and able to wait.

“I wore three pairs of socks and tights and yoga pants and pants over that,” said a 24-year-old Brooklynite, who waited outside the clinic for seven hours on Valentine’s Day with her 27-year-old boyfriend, who, like her, works from home. “We went to CVS and got foot warmers and blankets, which really helped. It wasn’t that bad. It was worth it for a shot at a shot.”

The couple was ultimately able to get their shots weeks or months before most of their peers.

“It’s obviously a very morally complicated situation,” added the 24-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid internet backlash. She said even before the pandemic, her boyfriend qualified as a hypochondriac. The pandemic has made him anxious and barely able to leave his room.

“It’s just an absolutely abysmal quality of life. We figured this would help a bit.” Still, she said, “Looking at the demographics of this line, it was all younger white or white-seeming people who didn’t have kids and were able to stand out in the cold for seven hours and had that privilege.”

The Cumberland clinic isn’t the only vaccine hub in New York City that sometimes has extra doses for people without appointments, but state policy is meant to guard against this kind of a free-for-all.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have to be stored at cold temperatures and thawed out shortly before being used. If a provider has leftover shots at the end of the day because of no-shows, they have to either put them in people’s arms or the trash. According to state guidelines, the vaccine sites are supposed to maintain standby lists with names and contact information for people who are eligible and able to show up on short notice if extra doses become available.

Gothamist/WNYC spoke to people who had snagged extra doses or a spot on a standby list and found that most had stumbled upon them by accident. After visiting vaccine hubs around Brooklyn, it seemed most hewed more closely to state guidance than Cumberland, but protocols still varied from place to place. Information about how to get on a standby list is not typically public knowledge.

Asked how standby lists work at NYC Health + Hospitals, a spokesman for the health system said, “Every one of our sites treats the vaccine like gold, and they follow state guidance with regard to leftover doses. They are required to have 'standby' lists of health care workers and patients they can reach out to in case there are leftover doses.”

When asked how people get on those lists, he went silent.

In many cases, getting a shot or on a list without an appointment is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

That was the case for one WNYC staffer who recently accompanied her mother to get vaccinated at Coney Island Hospital, a member of the city’s public hospital system. The hospital worker who vaccinated her mother said the 33-year-old could add her name to the standby list even though she wasn’t in a priority group because she lived close by. The worker told her that when she has tried calling people on the list in the past, most were not able to make it to the hospital in time.

At a Crown Heights vaccine site run by the city Health Department, a staff member said anyone who showed up and asked to be on the standby list could sign up by leaving their contact information, zip code, and eligibility group. Asked if people who were not eligible could enlist, she said yes—they just have to write down why they think they deserve to get vaccinated.

Some sites are stricter about their extra doses. A Crown Heights RiteAid that only inoculates people over 65 said its standby list is limited to that age group as well. The list is largely composed of those who had trouble booking online appointments, a pharmacy employee said. Meanwhile, a Walgreens in the neighborhood said they haven’t started vaccinating people yet, but when they do, they plan to call up regulars at the pharmacy who qualify whenever spare doses arise.

Some individual sites might give eligible recipients the chance to join a standby list online—that’s the case with Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park—but often, people land on the lists by pure happenstance.

A website called Dr. B, created by the founder and former CEO of ZocDoc, aims to change that. The national site is working to connect vaccine providers that might have extra doses with any nearby takers. Individuals can sign up in their area by entering their contact details, location, and eligibility information. The site says it has more than 300,000 sign-ups so far, but it’s unclear how successful it’s been at getting people those precious shots or toward making things easier for vaccine administrators.

At the Mount Sinai Health System, an administrator said the protocol for how to distribute extra doses has evolved over time and “is very situational.” The staffer asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

A few weeks ago, when Mount Sinai was doling out a lot of doses of the vaccine, staff would often ask eligible people who had accompanied their loved ones or spouses to their appointment if they wanted to wait around—in case an extra dose appeared. Now that the site is mostly administering second doses and is giving out fewer shots overall, staff will typically stick to calling people on their already robust standby list.

Doing more outreach to get people on standby can be a double-edged sword. The Mount Sinai administrator said their site partnered with a Manhattan nonprofit serving seniors early on to fill the hospital’s standby list. “But we didn’t work with them for too long,” they said. “Those people were eligible for appointments, so we didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, you’re on the standby list, so don’t go out and look for an appointment.’”

They said their site had not vaccinated anyone who is ineligible but said other sites might have less strict protocols because of less staffing or support.

As for the Fort Greene clinic with the line outside, a staffer said they have no plans to ditch the current system. He said using the required standby list is just too complicated.