ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — For at least a week, rumours have swirled among Newfoundland and Labrador’s 80-plus seniors that friends and acquaintances younger than them were getting vaccinated ahead of time.
On Sunday, The Telegram became aware of a suspicious-looking link and access code being shared among friends online as a means of booking an appointment.
The code was EHCOV19, clearly an abbreviation for Eastern Health COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Eastern Health and the Newfoundland Labrador Centre for Health Information (NLCHI) admitted a major loophole had allowed 2,800 individuals over the age of 70 to skip line ahead of older seniors.
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Gloria Peddle was one of them, until she found out through an acquaintance in the medical field that the link and code was not supposed to be available to the public.
Peddle called and cancelled.
“This is not fair to people who really need it first…,” she wrote in an email Tuesday. “We registered our names to have the vaccine and intend to wait until it is our turn.”
However, Eastern Health CEO David Diamond said in a hastily called news conference that none of the backdoor appointments will be cancelled.
Not laying blame
“We don’t believe there’s anything nefarious or anyone doing anything underhanded to try and cheat the system,” Diamond told reporters. “This is just a neighbour sharing with a neighbour and a family member saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got a code, why don’t you try this?’”
The code allows the patient to schedule the date and time of their appointment through the online portal Pomelo. If an individual hasn't received an invitation to this portal from their regional health authority, along with the code, they are not eligible. NLCHI says anyone who received an invitation but has yet to book an appointment will be provided with a new URL and booking code.
The NLCHI and the health authorities are also working on long-term solutions that include requiring individuals to show photo identification at the time of their appointment to confirm they are in an eligible vaccine group, and the introduction of a more robust auditing process to cross-reference booked appointments with a pre-registration list.
“We don’t believe there’s anything nefarious or anyone doing anything underhanded to try and cheat the system."
— David Diamond
However, NLCHI CEO Stephen Clark said Tuesday that making major software changes would impede the efficient delivery of vaccines.
He said from now on, codes issued to individuals will expire after 48 hours.
The NLCHI confirmed later Tuesday that all codes and access portals had been the same for each health region, so EHCOV19 would have been the code received by anyone in Eastern Health.
Disappointed
Peddle says she’s disappointed to think people who used codes shared by others will actually show up for a vaccination.
“I think something should be done about all these people who took advantage of this,” she said. “I was one of them until I knew the difference.
“It blows my mind that Eastern Health, or whoever, has allowed this to get so out of control.”
Asked what he’d say to those in the 80-plus range who’ve been waiting for weeks to get an appointment, Diamond said he understands their angst.
“I think something should be done about all these people who took advantage of this." — Gloria Peddle
“We all want to be vaccinated and we want our elderly parents to be vaccinated. We want the population to be vaccinated,” he said.
“I wish we could have caught this earlier and prevented it,” he said. “The commitment now is to say that they can expect in the very near future — over the next hours and small number of days — they’ll get a call from Eastern Health.”
Of the 2,800 appointments made through shared codes, about 200 were outside the Eastern Health region.
And while the new system is not foolproof, Diamond and Clark said the new mitigation measures make it very unlikely frontline staff will encounter any further illegitimate bookings at the site.
Diamond said he doesn’t want staff to have to send someone home, although the possibility exists.
“We hope that’s an absolute last resort,” he said.
Peter Jackson is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering health for The Telegram
[email protected]
Twitter: @pjackson_nl
