Having trouble finding a vaccine appointment in Seattle? You’re not alone

People across Washington state are contending with glitchy websites, full schedules, and an uncertain wait to get a vaccine. Getting an appointment is a combination of tech-savvy, fortitude, and luck.

Even then you can’t be sure to find a dose.

Some places you can book ahead. Other places you can’t.

Some places have a waitlist. Other places don’t.

And at a lot of places, the phone lines are full or the website just crashes.

Washington state and health care providers say they only get one week’s notice about how many doses they will receive. Short and unpredictable supply, coupled with a crushing demand is causing frustration for people newly eligible to receive vaccine doses.

Joy Twentyman leaned into her millennial tech skills on Tuesday to help her mother, who is over 80, secure a dose at the University of Washington.

“You sign up, you pick a time, and then you click to finish your registration," she said. "And then it pops up an error message that’s like ‘Oh you need to try again, that spot’s no longer available.”

So she opened multiple windows in different web browsers, she said. It was like trying to get concert tickets to see Brandi Carlile, or the popular K-pop group BTS.

“You have to click again and again and keep refreshing the page until hopefully eventually you can get a spot,” Twentyman said.

But many people are finding no spots available, no matter how many times they try.

Joella Pyatt in Olympia estimates she has spent about an hour or two a day trying to get vaccine appointments for her 66 year-old husband, and 82 and 89 year-old parents, including emailing at least 20 locations in multiple counties listed on the website of the state Department of Health.

“We finally ended up doing kind of a little mass email that we copied and copied over and over and sent it to all the clinics,” Pyatt said.

The clinics then sent back links to websites for finding and scheduling appointments, she said. They also got on a waiting list with their local provider, who doesn’t have any vaccine doses.

“Now I have it down to a system where I have all the links in one place and I can just sit down and do it while I drink my coffee in the morning,” Pyatt said.

On Friday, Pyatt’s father was able to book an appointment at the VA, she said, after an hour and fifteen minutes.

No luck so far for the others. Right now, they feel like they’re stuck without the vaccine. And Pyatt wants to travel to Alaska to see her grandson, she said.

“The baby’s going to be a year and he’s not going to know who his grandma is,” Pyatt said.

In Seattle, 79-year-old Marilyn Perles is getting on every list for vaccine doses she can find, including for the Virginia Mason vaccination clinic at Amazon on Sunday.

“At this rate I will have my name all over Seattle! My closest yet to becoming famous!” Perles said.

Joking aside, Perles is frustrated, she said.

“I will keep trying and hopefully somebody will get back to me, someday,” Perles said.

One place Perles called was her provider, the Polyclinic, and no one answered the phone. Perles also tried the website, and it crashed. A note appeared saying it was overloaded.

Next time she is going to try at midnight, she said.

“I guess you would have to do this every single minute of every day to get an appointment,” she said. “I don’t know what else to do.”