COVID Vaccine 'Line Jumpers' A Growing Problem In Montgomery Co.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — As Montgomery County works to distribute a decreasing allotment of COVID-19 vaccine supply, they're facing another "growing" problem with registration: so-called line jumpers.

The jumping is enabled by the nature of the current registration system used by the county, PrepMod. Individuals who sign up to receive a vaccine in the county are sent a generalized link to register when it's their turn.

Because links are not unique, there have been a number of cases where an individual sends a link to a family member, friend, or even posted it on social media. Often, these line jumpers are not even in the 1A priority group.

"We have to pull together as a community, and get the most vulnerable people in our community vaccinated first," Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said. "So I'm asking people to be honest."

It's not clear exactly how many people have butted in line in this manner, but officials noted that it's a problem that has grown over the past several weeks as the more vaccine registration links are sent out to the general over-65 population.

In the early weeks, the county was chiefly only vaccinating medical professionals, and there were far fewer cases of such jumping.

The county says they are working on making these registration links "single use," so that if someone attempts to share the link, it won't work.

"We're in a very difficult situation," Arkoosh said. "The vaccine is extremely scarce, compared to the demand, and we created a process was as fair and as equitable as we could be make it."

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Counties across the state, including Montgomery, meet with PrepMod on a weekly basis to discuss these issues. Thus far, a solution has not been found. The software was originally designed as a registration tool for medical offices — which worked smoothly when it was mainly medical offices being vaccinated in the early weeks — but has run into glitches as the inoculation program has expanded.

"The problem is one that has been growing," Arkoosh said.

In addition to working on fixes, the county is considering entirely new systems to replace this one, as well.

The situation is even more critical as the county receives fewer and fewer doses each week. This decreasing supply led the county's mass vaccine clinic at Norristown Area High School to be shut down for most of this week. They hope to reopen Monday.