Within hours of opening up appointments for people 70 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine, officials at Northern Light Health say all 2,000 available slots were booked.
Physician leader for incident command, Dr. James Jarvis, says Northern Light only booked appointments through early next week due to inconsistent vaccine supply.
“We are not at this time going to open up any future vaccine clinics or schedules until we actually know what we have on hand,” he says. “We’re taking a very cautious approach because what we don’t want to do is schedule people and then can cancel and reschedule their appointment. And we’ve seen that around the country.”
Jarvis says Northern Light was affected by the shipment of more than 4,000 Moderna doses that the Maine CDC says exceeded temperature requirements. He couldn’t immediately provide the number of affected doses sent to Northern Light, but said some replacements had arrived Wednesday.
Jarvis says Northern Light plans to open up vaccine slots each Monday. Currently all appointments must be booked online, but he says the health system is working to create a call center so appointments can also be made by phone.
