ALBANY COUNTY — Over 45,000 Albany County residents preregistered online for a COVID-19 vaccine and so far 42,000 of them have been vaccinated.
The preregistration system was set up by the Alliance for Better Health, based in Troy.

“When this first started, there was such demand for the vaccine and there was not a lot available,” said Alliance consultant Juliette Price, speaking at a May 13 county press conference.

Residents became frustrated, she said, if they couldn’t immediately book a shot. “We really flipped the script on that,” said Price.

The online system helped providers as well, she said, as the state earmarked vaccinations for specific populations.

“I felt like we were being set up for failure,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy, referencing the restrictions on who was eligible for shots. 

As the vaccination was being rolled out, McCoy frequently referenced the state’s system for sign-up as “the Hunger Games” as residents kept multiple computers running, trying to snag a reserved spot and often ended up traveling to far-flung state sites — say, in Plattsburg, Potsdam, or Utica — that had openings.

Price surmised that Albany County’s preregistration system helped push up its vaccination rate.

The data, she said, was “held securely” and a “back-end connection” was built to link to the state so as not to have duplication for New Yorkers who had already been vaccinated.

The Alliance, she said, is still in communication with the 300 or so residents who preregistered but have not yet been vaccinated. Outreach to residents is ongoing.

“We said, ‘Let us come to you,’” Price reported.

Text messaging, she said, was the most effective way to reach people and emojis added “a little levity” as well as encouraging people to click on the link.

“We sent over 93,000 text messages,” she said, adding, “Not by hand.”

Price also said, “We really built this with a lens of equity.” Alliance used the social vulnerability index created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Price said, to inform neighborhoods when there was a point of dispensing, a POD, or a pop-up clinic. 

“We messaged people in socially-vulnerable ZIP codes first,” she said.

Price noted, “The closer people live to a POD, the more likely they are to show up.” So people in a neighborhood with a pop-up clinic were invited first.

The Alliance, she said, was “organizing community pop-up clinics before it was cool.” The first one was in early February.

“We’ve done nearly 50 pop-up clinics and that represents 9,500 vaccinations,” said Price. They have been held in both urban and rural areas.

“We learned a lot along the way …,” said Price. “Now it’s a game of finding folks looking for a vaccine, doing a lot of education, doing a lot of engagement …. This infrastructure is not going away … The next time we need something like this, it will already be there.”