Chicago Alderman Saved My Ward From Week Without 1,000 Vaccines

CHICAGO — My Chicago ZIP code is one of those poor, mostly minority coronavirus hot spots that you hear politicians talk about targeting for vaccinations as a matter of social equity.

There are good reasons that government vaccine distribution focuses on us.

So far, about 1 in 15 of my neighbors in the 60628 ZIP code contracted COVID-19.

In the neighborhoods anchored by Roseland and Pullman, about 1 in 350 people died from coronavirus complications — that's 50 percent higher than the citywide death rate, according to city public health data.

Still, my neighbors and I aren't getting vaccinated as swiftly as other parts of the city.

We aren't eligible to sign up for shots at the United Center, a federal mass vaccination site equipped to get 6,000 shots in arms each day.

And this week, one minor screw-up nearly caused more than a thousand people in the 60628 ZIP code to miss out on COVID-19 vaccinations.

Such is the fragile reality of a highly politicized coronavirus vaccine Hunger Games playing out in a state where every public health jurisdiction has its own confusing set of rules, regulations and racial equity outreach efforts.

About 2,500 vaccine doses won't be delivered to Roseland Hospital — a far South Side safety-net medical center — partly due to a typo on a vaccine order.

Roseland Hospital didn't submit its vaccination request on time, public health officials said.

Hospital CEO Tim Egan told me a manager put the wrong date on the weekly vaccine order. "This was not the city's mistake," he said. He refused further comment.

I don't care who takes the blame. Managing the vaccine rollout isn't easy. There isn't enough vaccine to go around. Ordering and delivering doses is most certainly a logistics nightmare. Just last week, we had to deal with Gov. J.B. Pritzker playing "fakequity" politics at the United Center mass-vaccination site.

What's important is we learn from this latest miscue and make adjustments, so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.

Egan told me Roseland Hospital's vaccine ordering protocols now include approval from multiple administrators.

My hope is somebody over at the city public health department does the same.

The mix-up shows that the city's targeted vaccine effort could use a dose of common sense and double-checking when there's such high demand for inoculations in short supply.

For weeks now, Roseland Hospital has been a leader in vaccination distribution in the 60628 ZIP code — where city data shows 12 percent of the population has received at least one dose, and 6 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.

The hospital repurposed its dental van as a coronavirus vaccine mobile unit that made stops at local nursing homes and community centers to target older folks who otherwise might not seek out the shots.

Even with Roseland Hospital's innovated pop-up vaccine efforts and the city's Protect Chicago Plus effort to send more vaccine doses to parts of town hit the hardest by COVID-19, the 60628 ZIP code trails citywide vaccination rates — about 18 percent of Chicagoans have received a first dose and nearly 10 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, city data shows.

The missed weekly shipment of vaccine doses only threatened to widen the equity gap.

At least 1,000 doses, according to Ald. Anthony Beale (9th Ward), were "re-directed to another vaccination site, in another area of the city.”

"The vaccines we're supposed to get this week aren't coming," Beale told me. "It's an example of the utter incompetency in the running of this darn program. We're getting killed down here."

Beale is a frequent critic of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration, whom the mayor often dismisses as a misinformed, attention-seeking ward boss. They don't often agree and don't like each other, much.

On this particular topic, Beale makes a strong point. City Hall should politely thank the alderman for his public tongue-lashing and make commonsense adjustments so this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

The missing order should have raised a red flag with Lightfoot's vaccine equity crew to find out if there's a reason a hospital in one of the 15 coronavirus hot spots targeted by the Protect Chicago Plus program didn't ask for its weekly allocation of shots.

But that didn't happen.

Did they figure that Roseland Hospital — one of the leading shot givers in 60628 — decided to shut down vaccinations for spring break?

When I asked about that, city public health officials only pointed a finger at Roseland Hospital and said "at this time we are unable to accommodate orders that were submitted after the deadline. Surveys completed after the deadline are filled the following week, so they will receive those doses next week."

Take it from a guy whose grandma didn't get vaccinated when the shot was available to her, contracted COVID-19 and died: People most likely to suffer the most serious consequences of COVID-19 — and statistics show that includes folks living in the 60628 ZIP code — shouldn't have to wait to get shots due to an invoice error.

Beale said he made a failed attempt to get City Hall to remedy the vaccine order mistake.

"I tried to work with the administration, to no avail. So, now I'm taking matters into my own hands, like I have done numerous occasions before, to take care of residents in the 9th Ward," Beale said.

Over the weekend, Beale said he called national pharmacies, his City Council colleagues, Pritzker's office and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, begging for someone to deliver more than 1,000 vaccine doses to his far South Side ward this week.

"Finally, Jewel-Osco stepped up to fill the void, and my staff is working so hard — our email is blowing up with people trying to register for a time slot — to get the shots scheduled for people who need them," Beale said.

On Monday, Beale put word out to 9th Ward residents than people over 40 years old can sign up with his ward office to get vaccinated at the Pullman Community Center between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday.

For me and my neighbors, he came through with a shot in the arm when we really need it.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

More from Mark Konkol:

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• Pritzker's 'Fakequity' Problem Surfaces At United Center Vax Site
• Lightfoot Won't Be Bullied By Pritzker's United Center Power Play
• Most IL Dems Mum As Biden Lets Chicago U.S. Attorney Keep Digging
• With A Little Help Vet Breaks Through Inept Unemployment System