NEWS CITY DESK
Shot Chasers
Illustration by Ronan Lynam
Washingtonians are venturing a long way from home to receive COVID-19 vaccines.
By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez Natalie drove more than 100 miles on March 25 to get a COVID-19 vaccine at the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration set up a mass vaccination site. She went that far, she says, because she figured she’d never get the COVID-19 vaccine in D.C., where she’s lived for the last three years. The National Guard welcomed Natalie when she arrived at the arena in Salisbury, Mar yland. They checked if she had an appointment (she did) and requested to see some form of photo identification (which she had). She showed her D.C.-issued ID, which lists her address in Ivy City, a handful of times before she got the jab, but says no one at the vaccine site asked her about it. “They never did a double take. They never questioned if I was moving to Maryland. I never felt judged,” said Natalie, who requested to be identified by only her first name due to the nature of her work. “They’re all doctors and nurses. I feel like they were focusing more
on their job of just helping people, as opposed to gatekeeping help that people need.” Natalie, who is 31 and works at a global philanthropy nonprofit, says she has a qualifying medical condition that makes her vaccine-eligible in Maryland and the District. But booking an appointment in the jurisdiction where she lives proved frustrating. She became eligible in late February, when DC Health opened the vaccine portal to residents 18 and over with qualifying medical conditions. She was among the tens of thousands of people who tried to claim one of the couple thousand appointments that became available two days a week. The Hunger Games-style system, which was riddled with technical issues, is Natalie’s main gripe with the city’s vaccine rollout. Natalie believes the new pre-registration system that launched March 10 is better. But once her partner got an appointment through D.C.’s lottery system and family members in other parts of the country got vaccinated, Natalie decided she could wait no longer and started searching for other ways to get the shot. She became a vaccine hunter. “I was not lying. I was not trying to get around the system just to get one,” says Natalie. “If
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they’re going to bar me and say that my address is not allowed, OK. That’s fine. I can wait. But I felt like I was very welcomed in that they were flexible in letting me in. So I thought, ‘I’ll just take advantage of this.’” Natalie booked an appointment through Maryland’s website for mass vaccination sites. She says she saw hundreds of appointments available and used her D.C. address when she signed up. Maryland officials are not encouraging D.C. residents to get vaccinated in their state, but they are not turning away any of them for doing so either. These “vaccine hunters” have sometimes been characterized as rule-breakers. Natalie does not see herself this way. She is one of countless individuals who have gotten vaccinated out-of-state, based on anecdotal reports. Some people may have lied about their eligibility, while others learned of places where eligibility is open to a wider population and residency requirements are not strictly enforced. Each individual has their own reasons for getting vaccinated as soon as possible. Natalie, for example, says she lost a family member to COVID-19 and hasn’t socialized with anyone but her partner in person in the last five months.
Waiting for your turn to get the vaccine seems relatively simple. Local governments have rolled out vaccination plans that keep those most at risk of serious illness from COVID-19 top of mind, and residents are expected to trust that their elected leaders are acting in good faith. Anyone deciding to cut the line takes the place of someone who really needs the shot, the thinking goes. But what if it is your turn and you can get the shot sooner somewhere else? D.C. residents frustrated with the city’s rollout say this is true of them. Crossing borders to receive better health care is nothing new. This phenomenon tends to happen when care in a particular area is inaccessible or medication prices are inflated. In the U.S., access to quality health care can boil down to ZIP code. People living in rural areas may travel more than 40 miles for breast cancer treatment, and those seeking more reasonably priced insulin have gone to Canada or Mexico to buy it. In D.C., demand for the vaccine still exceeds supply, so it’s still out of reach for many eligible people. Some cast all the blame on the D.C. government, but there are practical reasons for why doses are so scarce for residents. Enthusiasm for the shot among the unvaccinated is higher in D.C. than most other cities and states nationwide, according to the latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey. The Bowser administration has also used nearly a third of its supply on nonresidents because so many of the city’s essential workers live elsewhere. 75 percent of D.C.’s 85,000 health care workers live in Maryland and Virginia, for example, and DC Health moved to vaccinate these workers first. The federal government has denied the Bowser administration’s multiple requests for more doses, given the uniqueness of its worker population. Even Virginia Sen. Mark Warner’s legislative attempt to bring parity to the allocation of doses proved unsuccessful. A request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a mass site in D.C. that would result in increased supply was also rejected. Even if supply were to increase, it appears as though D.C.’s current vaccinators would still struggle to quickly vaccinate eager residents. Community health centers and pharmacies that get supply directly from DC Health and the federal government are having logistical troubles. Giant, for example, temporarily requested that the federal government stop sending any more vaccines because the company needs additional personnel to administer more shots, according to the Post. DC Health has so far not requested any support from federal personnel. “We have plenty of vaccinators in the District and so that’s not very helpful to us,” DC Health’s emergency response director, Patrick Ashley, said during a March 24 conference call with the D.C. Council. Access to the vaccine varies greatly from place to place, since states and providers receive different amounts of doses and have different eligibility standards. So many vying for an appointment have turned to social media to identify opportunities. Natalie, for
