Volunteers Can Help Maplewood, South Orange Residents Get Vaccine

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Last month, a Spanish-speaking woman in North Jersey needed a coronavirus vaccine in a hurry because she was traveling out of the state to help a family member — and wanted the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine so she could get one shot before leaving. At the time, availability was scarce.

The woman contacted a volunteer group that started in Hoboken to help those who — because of technical difficulties, language barriers, or another reason — were having trouble getting a shot.

"One of our volunteers, Kanika Ghai, did extensive research of CVS stores with J&J doses remaining," said the group's founder, Jennifer Delgado, Tuesday. "Manasi Khedlekar, one of our other volunteers, is a whiz with CVS appointments in general, so she helped educate the rest of the volunteers ... Ultimately, it was Kim McEathron-Foley who snagged the lucky J&J appointment at a CVS store in West Cape May."

Despite having to travel more than two hours from Hudson County to the tip of the state, "The requester was ecstatic, and sent us a heartfelt thank you and selfie to commemorate the occasion," Delgado said.

The group — named "Sarah's Vaccine Angels," after Delgado's late grandmother — created new flyers in Spanish and English last week (see below) and has expanded its reach to help eligible people who still need the vaccines.

Several new groups of New Jersey residents became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine this week, and anyone over 16 will be eligible beginning April 19.

Besides Hudson County towns, the group would like to help those in and around Maplewood, South Orange, Newark, East Orange, Orange, Montclair, Bloomfield, Belleville, Irvington, Hackensack, Edgewater, Lodi, Teterboro, Garfield, Fairview, Moonachie, Wallington, Bogota, Cliffside Park, Roselle, New Brunswick, Paterson, Passaic, and Elizabeth, Delgado said.

"The appointment system is still incredibly difficult to navigate for our most marginalized communities," she said.

The group has also developed a one-sheet with tips and tricks to find an appointment: Click here.

How to find out more

Delgado said that 200 people have contacted them since they were founded last month. (Delgado started the group after helping her grandfather in Monmouth County get an appointment.)

"For now, we have hit pause on onboarding new volunteers, except those that speak Spanish, to help book appointments," she said. "However, if anyone is interested in helping in our outreach efforts (particularly hanging/distributing flyers outside of Hoboken), they can reach us at sarahsvaccineangels@gmail.com."

Besides using that email address, people who want to contact the group can also email HobokenC19volunteers@gmail.com or call 201-241-4292.

See the group's flyers in Spanish and English below, and below them, see links to more information about Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines.

Read more about volunteers

• Find out about the founding of Sarah's Vaccine Angels here.
• Read about a similar group formed in Union County, founded by a Westfield teen, here.

More information

• Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, including the two-dose Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, are a new type of vaccine that doesn't include the weakened virus, but teaches human cells to make a protein that triggers the immune response (read more about that here). The Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine is more traditional (see stories about all three vaccines here and here). Doctors say that the important metric is that all three are effective in preventing serious illness and death from covid, and that having the majority of the public vaccinated, no matter which vaccine, will lessen the spread.
• Find out if you're eligible now in NJ by clicking this link.
• As of this week, 550,000 Americans had died of the virus. (See how your county is doing with this CDC link.)

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