UCLA Needs a New Vaccine Rollout for Eligible Employees - Part 5 (Further and Final Update)

 

For those who are awaiting the next installment of yours truly's adventures with UCLA's vaccine rollout for eligible employees, here it is. I think this will be the last episode.

Faithful readers will know that eligible UCLA employees are supposed to be somewhere in the queue for vaccination. But they have to fill out various forms and surveys using websites that are - let's just say - problematic. In the case of yours truly, after the authorities looked into the particular problems he was having, they determined that despite his being on the payroll as a recalled faculty member, he wasn't on their list. Why? Well, if you are recalled in winter quarter, your first paycheck will be in February. So you are non-existent in a system that looks for previous paychecks as the marker for being on the payroll. Obviously, there is a problem here since older recalled faculty in winter quarter will be omitted.

What about yours truly's status as just a plain old patient? He did get a recent invitation based on that status. (But since he was never acknowledged as an employee, we will never know if the two statuses might somehow conflict.) By the time of the patient invitation, he had already gotten his first shot from another source (LA County at the Forum). 

According to the UCLA website, if you have your first shot from another source, you are not eligible for a second one from UCLA. But yours truly has a (patient) friend who got a phone call invitation from UCLA. He had gotten a first shot from another source, but he asked whoever was calling about getting the second one from UCLA. He was told that he could just ignore what it said on the website and just book a second shot through UCLA. 

Yours truly hasn't tried that approach since he now has a second shot appointment confirmed through the County at the Forum and why rock the boat? But he did take his wife for her first shot at UCLA-Santa Monica which went smoothly. And she was given an appointment to return in a month for the second shot.

The bottom line here is that if you succeed in getting an appointment through UCLA, the actual implementation thereafter is well organized by all reports. The problem is in the "if." In addition, as this episode and prior ones have noted, there are the official rules for who gets a shot, and then there is what actually happens.