COVID-19 vaccine chaos leads to ‘leftover dose’ and ‘real-time alert’ sites


COVID-19 vaccine chaos leads to 'leftover dose' and 'real-time alert' sites

Even as vaccine manufacturing ramps up, with President Joe Biden promising enough vaccines for all Americans by May, the chaotic rollout, paired with vaccine hesitancy, has created an unequal supply-and-demand equation around the country.

Missed vaccine appointments have resulted in some leftover COVID-19 vaccine doses being available at the end of the day and in some cases being dumped when the vaccines expire.

It’s why startups like Dr.B, and even public companies like GoodRx (GDRX), are getting into the business of bringing the latest information to patients, and even matching patients to vaccines based on CDC priority eligibility and zip codes.

Dr.B launched at the end of January, lead by former ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi, and has already amassed 1 million sign-ups.

The site design is simple, with vaccine sites providing Dr.B with how many doses are available and when they expire. Dr.B then matches locations to patients and notifies eligible candidates via text.

Dr.B has doesn’t sell patient information, which is only shared when the vaccine appointment is accepted by the patient, Massoumi said.

The platform helps avoid what is currently a labor-intensive hunt for expiring doses — with Americans stalking pharmacies and other vaccine sites near the end of the day in hopes of jumping the queue to get a shot. In some cases, health professionals have chosen to provide the about-to-expire doses to family and friends, often facing significant repercussions.

“Patients are canceling and no-showing 20%-30% of the time. That’s resulting in the scramble that’s happening at vaccine sites all across the country, and it’s resulting in potentially sub-optimal allocation of vaccine,” Massoumi said, noting that is what spurred his interest in launching the site.

But Massoumi said that while his site could help someone get a shot sooner, they should not rely on it as the first choice.

“This is a plan B, this is a backup option,” Massoumi said.

The site currently offers services for free to both patients and vaccine sites, and Massoumi said there are no immediate plans to find revenue.

When asked about his long-term business plan, Massoumi said there will be a need for the site for a time to come, including globally.

“Right now, we are dealing with the problem of our generation. This is our generation’s world war, and so within that war, this vaccine is the scarcest resource,” Massoumi said.

“The whole world is not supposed to be vaccinated until 2023, and … the 2,500 mutations that currently exist across the world” could pose an ongoing need for vaccines, Massoumi said.

Dr.B is run by a group of engineers that left Haven, the now-defunct joint venture between Amazon (AMZN), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) and JPMorgan (JPM). the mix to help provide alerts whenever a new site opens or

GoodRx co-CEO Dough Hirsch recently told Yahoo Finance he is also building a site, borrowing some of GoodRx’s engineers and dedicating them to the task.

“I’m going to pause all the other work I’m doing. I’m going to focus on solving what we can do for this pandemic,” he said.

Stations where COVID-19 vaccines will be administrated are shown set up at a mass vaccination site, Wednesday, March 10, 2021, at the Lumen Field Events Center in Seattle. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and other officials announced Wednesday that the site would begin operation Saturday, and said at full capacity it would be the largest civilian-run vaccination site in the country. Lumen Field is the home stadium of the Seattle Seahawks NFL football team and the Seattle Sounders MLS soccer team. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Stations where COVID-19 vaccines will be administrated are shown set up at a mass vaccination site, Wednesday, March 10, 2021, at the Lumen Field Events Center in Seattle. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and other officials announced Wednesday that the site would begin operation Saturday, and said at full capacity it would be the largest civilian-run vaccination site in the country. Lumen Field is the home stadium of the Seattle Seahawks NFL football team and the Seattle Sounders MLS soccer team. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

It’s a hefty lift as the company pursues being a national hub for appointments, even after the CDC announced its vaccine finder site.

“Today, everyone’s talking about the vaccine finder data, which is amazing, and we are a launch partner of theirs,” Hirsch said, adding that he is partnering with major retail pharmacies and vaccine sites as well.

But some sites aren’t playing ball.

“The challenge of course is that the major pharmacy chains, and we know them really well, are trying to make sure that their servers stay up and that no bad actors infiltrate,” Hirsch said.

It’s why even some of the smaller, independently run appointment sites can have outdated information or lack some information about vaccine appointments.

“But, I get it, pharmacy chains are really busy just trying to keep these things up and inject arms,” Hirsch said, adding that some pharmacies are working on ways for GoodRx to plug in safely.

Beyond the large chains, independently-run mass vaccination sites may also be run by a third-party for appointments, so chasing those down and plugging into their systems in all 50 states plus territories is a massive undertaking.

Hirsch noted he’s been in touch with Andy Slavitt, senior advisor of the White House COVID-19 Response Team, to figure out how to help target disadvantaged communities as well.

“It was a really eye-opening conversation with Andy … because he continue to challenge us to figure out ways to reach out to those underserved communities,” Hirsch said.

Recently, Slavitt announced the federal government is pursuing low-tech options including phone calls to reach some communities.

“Our audience is more in the middle- to lower-income [area], and I think we’ve done a pretty good job — We have a 10-year plus history” of being able to reach individuals with less robust internet access, Hirsch said.

Which is why another aspect of GoodRx’s efforts is to combat vaccine hesitancy, which will include information on the website about the various vaccines and actively sharing information via text for users that provide cell phone numbers.

Hirsch noted that while that does still leave some portion of the population out of the loop, he hopes it includes more people than just Internet-savvy individuals.

More from Anjalee:

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance.

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube.

Follow Anjalee on Twitter @AnjKhem.




Source link