By Viviane Faver
In the early stages of delivering the coronavirus vaccine to those who need it most, some health officials resorted to an unexpected tool: the Eventbrite ticketing website.
Mai Miller, 48, from Merritt Island, Florida, used Eventbrite last week in search of a place for her mother. She scrolled through the dates and times pages, repeatedly updating the site and looking for blue reservation buttons, signaling availability. She found some, but she could not click on them quickly enough. “It was just a mess,” she said.” Like musical chairs with 20 chairs and 4,000 people.” Mrs. Miller did not find an appointment, but others were a little lucky.
Eventbrite has been used to schedule vaccinations in several counties in Florida, Sevier, Tenn., and in the city of Allen, Texas. Even healthcare providers in Britain used the platform. This raised accessibility concerns, as not everyone has access to the Internet or knows how to use Eventbrite.
With that, scams have already been reported. The Pinellas County, Florida, health department warned that appointments made through a “fraudulent Eventbrite website” were not valid, and The Tampa Bay Times reported that Eventbrite had been used to charge people for vaccines that turned out to be false. These failures are part of a much bigger problem: the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine in the United States and elsewhere is an unprecedented project with vast operational challenges.
Federal officials acknowledged that the launch was slower than expected. They also left many details of the vaccine distribution process, such as scheduling and personnel, to overworked local health workers and hospitals struggling with a lack of resources.
The director of emergency management of Nassau County, Florida, Greg Foster, said that this situation is very stressful and that he is working with health department officials to administer the vaccine. “We are getting a lot of angry people contacting us because they cannot get the vaccine, and I understand why they are upset.”
He adds that Eventbrite has been a useful tool because the county’s websites and phone lines are unable to meet demand and have limited supply. “We have tens of thousands of people trying to get 850 vaccines,” said Foster.
According to the Florida Department of Health’s assistant director in Brevard County, Anita Stremmel, health department employees administer hundreds of doses a day. “Our team is amazing, but the logistics have not been easy. Initial efforts to schedule appointments over the phone have resulted in phone interruptions and dropped lines,” she said – so when local authorities saw other counties using Eventbrite, they decided to follow suit.
Stremmel said people should access the Eventbrite page only through the health department’s website to avoid scams.
Miller, who lives in Brevard County, said someone sent her a text message with a link to Eventbrite’s vaccination reserves last week. “My first reaction was: it does not look legitimate,” she said. However, she was determined to help her mother, Chut Agger, 68, get an appointment. A visit to the county website confirmed that the Eventbrite link was real, so Mrs. Miller tried her luck. She knew the platform because she had used it before – to buy concert tickets – but still has not secured a spot.
“I could not imagine my mom, who does not understand technology, trying to make an appointment on her own,” said Miller. Before her daughter tried to make an appointment online, Ms. Agger spent hours calling the county health department to make an appointment. However, she never managed to be attended.
In a statement, Eventbrite said that anyone who used the platform to register for coronavirus-related events should direct their questions to local health officials. The company did not respond to questions about protecting the privacy of people who booked vaccination appointments on the platform.
According to the associate director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, Kayte Spector-Bagdady, using Eventbrite to process protected medical information may violate the privacy regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Liability Act of America, or HIPAA. However, she emphasized that local authorities are using tools to bring the vaccine to as many people as possible.
“Now, counties and individual institutions are really left to take as much as possible – to try to vaccinate the population in fairways while trying to get more products from the feds to the states, and then use all the products they have,” Professor Spector Bagdady said. “It is extraordinarily complex, so I have nothing but sympathy for these health professionals, who are struggling to get vaccines.”
Ms. Miller said she was not particularly concerned about privacy when she used Eventbrite to find a vaccination schedule for Ms. Agger. Her main focus, she said, was to keep her mother safe from Covid-19. “Now there is this vaccine, and it seems almost unattainable,” she said. “It is there, but we can’t get there. There has to be a better way. “
