Submitted by San Juan County.

Some key information islanders should be aware of about the ongoing San Juan County Health and Community Services vaccination effort:

Current eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine is limited to individuals in Phase 1a and Phase 1b Tier 1. This includes healthcare workers, first responders, those over 65, and those over 50 and caring for a grandchild or elder. Full details are available here.

The next round of reservations for vaccine appointments in San Juan County will be made available at 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 29.

IMPORTANT: San Juan County has received 200 doses of vaccine from the State for distribution next week to individuals receiving their first shot. Demand will far exceed supply. Thank you for your patience.

There will be high demand for reservations. Please know the following:

1. For a short time after 5 p.m. on Jan. 29, there may be slight delays of a few minutes as reservations open.

2. Given the many people attempting to register at once, please know that you will not actually be booked for a reservation until you have confirmed your reservation AND you are shown the confirmation screen and receive a confirmation email (click links to few samples of each). If you do not see the screen or receive an email, it means you do not have a confirmed appointment for a COVID vaccine.

3. Please continue to monitor the San Juan County COVID vaccine info page for continuously updated information, including when future reservations will become available.

There is no waitlist. Many have thoughtfully suggested it as a good idea. Please keep in mind that:

1. Any waitlist would quickly exceed many thousands of individuals.

2. There is no fixed schedule for timing or amount of future vaccine deliveries from the State to the County. It is literally week to week.

3. Given that there is no way to know future appointment availability, there is no way to confirm the schedule availability of those registered for a waitlist.

4. As time goes on, many individuals will be immunized elsewhere and no longer need the vaccine.

Without an effective sophisticated nation or statewide online system that ensures privacy and manages appointment scheduling and waitlists, a phone call would be required to process each person on the waitlist. At this time, in the midst of the rollout effort, and continued work on case investigation, contact tracing, and other public health response efforts, neither personnel nor infrastructure is available to manage a waitlist of that size.

Please be patient folks. Thank you!