IL Expands Vaccine Eligibility: How To Track Down A Shot

ILLINOIS — As of Monday, all Illinoisans age 16 and older are eligible for the coronavirus vaccine statewide, except for the city of Chicago, which is expected to open eligibility next week. Another 150,000 appointments are expected to open this week at mass vaccination sites across the state, but signing up for them could be tricky.

If you're newly eligible for the vaccine, options include signing up through a local pharmacy or hospital, or trying to get an appointment at a mass vaccination site or your county health department.

Pharmacies offering the vaccine include:

• COSTCO
• CVS
• Hy-Vee
• Jewel-Osco
• Kroger
• Mariano's
• Meijer
• Sam's Club
• Walgreens
• Walmart

Anyone without internet access or who needs assistance making an appointment can call the Illinois Department of Public Health's toll-free hotline at 833-621-1284 to book an appointment.

Beyond that, the rush to find open appointments has spawned person-to-person whisper networks, makeshift online tools and even vaccine-chaser Facebook groups and Twitter accounts — some of them listed by government officials alongside the state's own resources.

Private vaccine sleuthing projects include:

• Facebook's Find a COVID-19 Vaccine page
• Chicago Vaccine Hunters (Facebook group)
• Illinois COVID-19 Vaccine Spotter
• ILVaccine.org
• Illinois Vaccine Alert (Twitter account)

Many of these resources are listed on the City of Chicago's COVID-19 website, but none are affiliated with any state or local government. That said, they seem far more user-friendly than the state's own vaccine locator.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week stressed the importance of getting vaccinated as soon as possible.

"We're at a point where the variants are rising. They're coming at the population so fast at every age. We need to make sure that we open this up to everybody. There are lots of different groups that have been prioritized prior, and groups that you could separate out and say we want to prioritize going forward. But we now need to get as many shots into arms as quickly as we possibly can," the governor said.

Alongside the governor at a press conference on Thursday, Cook County Health CEO Israel Rocha asked people to seek out reliable information and "rely on facts and science to make your decisions to protect yourself and your family."

All the vaccines currently available in the United States have been through multi-phase clinical trials with more than 30,000 participants, and the FDA says they are safe. That doesn't mean there won't be any side effects — the most common being soreness at the injection site, fatigue, fever, chills and headache. But officials say the side effects are short-lived, comparable to those experienced with the Shingles vaccine or seasonal flu shot.

"The side effects of the vaccine are far better and much more mild than having COVID," Rocha said.