MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University and WVU Medicine sound similar, but they are two separate entities.
And that caused a lot of confusion with people who wanted to register to receive the COVID-19 vaccine last week.
On March 12, WVU sent an email saying it was gauging interest from students asking whether the doses should be made available through the Higher Education Policy Commission and the West Virginia Interagency Task Force. The university also asked students who want to receive the vaccine before the end of the semester to fill out a questionnaire for a future appointment through them. (The deadline was Sunday.)
The problem, however, was an unspecified number of WVU students and employees registered with WVU Medicine to get the vaccine. Or, they registered for the vaccine on a social media site. That, in turn, caused WVU Medicine to cancel their appointments.
“To schedule an appointment at our vaccine clinic, individuals must answer a series of questions online to determine if they meet the state’s current eligibility requirements,” a WVU Medicine spokesperson said in an email to The Dominion Post.
“However, several people were able to schedule their appointments without answering these required questions by using a link that circulated widely on several social media sites,” the spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, many of those people did not meet the current eligibility requirements, so we were required to cancel their appointments, at least for now. However, we expect everyone to have access to the vaccine relatively soon as the vaccines become more widely available.”
President Joe Biden has said he would like to have everyone vaccinated by May 1.
“In the meantime, the state has understandably established priorities based on a variety of risk factors and first wants to vaccinate those people who are most at-risk. We are simply asking people to follow the state’s priorities and let those who are most at-risk get their vaccines first.”
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