Congressman Brown: Asking Marylanders To Spend Hours Signing Up For Vaccine Appointments Is Not A Coherent Strategy

Press Release

Congressman Anthony G. Brown (MD-04) released the following statement regarding Maryland's fragmented and inefficient COVID-19 vaccine appointment sign-up, and the state's guidance that residents should sign-up through multiple portals in order to increase their chances of vaccination:

"Asking average Marylanders to spend hours signing up for vaccine appointments through multiple websites or waiting in endless phone queues is not a coherent strategy for quick and equitable vaccine distribution. Working families are juggling jobs, schooling, child care and daily life. The pandemic has only compounded these challenges. While Governor Hogan shuns responsibility for the state's vaccine failures, Marylanders are growing increasingly frustrated as we continue to lag behind the rest of the country.

"Governor Hogan has rejected a streamlined process successfully implemented by multiple other states. It's not a sustainable model to ask every Marylander to fill out multiple forms, on multiple websites with no assurance that they will actually secure an appointment. This is a recipe for failure and will ultimately hurt Marylanders most vulnerable to COVID-19. Before opening up the system to millions of people we owed it to them to make this process easy to navigate as we ramp up vaccine production. Marylanders need state officials to step up to the challenge instead of offering excuses."

A resident of Prince George's County who uses the state's searchable database to schedule a vaccination appointment is given a list of both private (Giant, Safeway, Luminis, Adventist, etc.) and public (University of Maryland Medical System, Six Flags vaccination site, Prince George's County Health Department, etc.) vaccine providers. Each requires the resident to submit multiple forms and different information. Unfortunately, the portal does not indicate which sites have open appointments or available vaccines. Residents have to be rely on luck and put in long hours refreshing websites to be able to secure a dose in this complicated and disjointed system:

Instead of a simple one-stop portal, Marylanders experience persistent website crashes, endless hours on the phone and an appointment system that is simply "not working as it should." The result, as characterized by The Atlantic, is "no more fair or logical than an old-fashioned Moscow queue for cabbage."

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