Weather-related vaccine appointment cancellations confuse some LIers

Many Long Island residents who had COVID-19 vaccination appointments over the past few days at state-run locations saw them canceled due to the extreme cold, and then the nor'easter.

News 12 Staff

Feb 3, 2021, 1:07 AM

Updated 1,361 days ago

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The nor'easter continued to impact efforts to get the pandemic under control Tuesday.
Many Long Island residents who had COVID-19 vaccination appointments over the past few days at state-run locations saw them canceled due to the extreme cold, and then the nor'easter.
The state has repeatedly said that everyone who has an appointment canceled will have it rescheduled. They say those affected will be notified either by phone call, email or text.
But News 12 is hearing that that isn't always happening, leaving lots of people wondering what to do now.
Farina says he spent days looking for an appointment before finally booking one for last Saturday. But what he didn't know was the state had already suspended appointments hours earlier. Somehow, he was still able to book one.
That wasn't all -- Farina says when he called the state hotline to confirm his appointment Saturday morning, he says they told him the Jones Beach site was open. Once he drove down, he was greeted with closure signs.
Now, he's still awaiting a rescheduled appointment.
"Do I try to get another appointment, or do I wait for an email that I may or may not ever get?" asks Tony Farina, of Central Islip. "I don't know what's going on. And the only communication you have is with the New York state hotline. They don't have information, so if they don't have it how am I going to get it or all the other people asking for it?
Farina called the state hotline with News 12. A woman on the other end told him she had no idea why he hadn't had his appointment rescheduled, and filled out a notification issue tracker so that hopefully someone will realize that he's still trying to reschedule his Saturday appointment.
While the state still says people should receive a message to reschedule, Suffolk says it doesn't have any vaccine and didn't have to reschedule any appointments because of the cold or the snow.
According to officials in Nassau, anyone who had an appointment for Tuesday at a county-run facility is being rescheduled for Friday at the same time as their original appointment.
A state spokesperson tells News 12, “As we were in the process of postponing appointments due to weather over the weekend, some eagle-eyed New Yorkers inadvertently saw ‘open’ appointments on the state website for days the vaccination sites were closed. While this impacted an extremely small number of New Yorkers, we are contacting everyone involved to get them scheduled correctly.”