90 years old, required to wait two months for the vaccine

The third day of the vaccination campaign, and the waiting times for an appointment at the HMOs are still long: Today (Wednesday) the vaccination campaign began, which began this week for its third day, when out of about 74 vaccinated, about 52,000 were vaccinated at the health funds. However, almost a week after the vaccination appointment centers opened – many insureds, especially at the Clalit fund, are still complaining about unreasonable waiting times at the HMO centers and appointments scheduled for February and March.

Meanwhile, Maccabi has opened a drive-in compound for vaccines in Haifa, in order to increase the number of vaccinated and maintain their health. Meanwhile, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein instructed hospitals to join the funds and vaccinate the population to reduce congestion.

It should be noted that at this stage the only ones who can be vaccinated are the members of the medical staff in the hospitals and the health funds and the insured of the funds aged 60 and over. Since the opening of the vaccination campaign, Ynet has received dozens of inquiries from insureds who are unable to make an appointment for the vaccine. Most of the complaints are from Clalit HMO policyholders. However, this is the largest fund in Israel, with a significant gap over the competition, and the rate of insureds aged 60 and over is the highest as well.

“I called on behalf of my father yesterday morning to make an appointment for him,” says Heli Koren from Ariel, who called for an appointment for her father, Yosef Valensky, a resident of Ramat Gan and a Clalit insured. “I waited 42 minutes on the line. When they answered, I asked for an appointment and explained that I wanted to make an appointment for my 74-year-old father. We were told that there were appointments only in March in Bnei Brak. I asked if anything would change by then, “In life, he says that what needs to happen will happen, but it bothers me because he lives alone and we take care of him. It’s just annoying that this is how we are treated. They explained to us that there are simply no places available and the queues are busy.”

Additional insureds of the fund from the central area tell of similar experiences. “My mother is 93 years old and she lives alone in Ramat Gan,” says Anat, a resident of the central area. “Of course she can not order herself a vaccine. My sister and I tried to get her an appointment, but the earliest date for us was February 12. We saw all the celebrities getting vaccinated at Ichilov Hospital, but my mother had to wait almost two months for an appointment. We managed to achieve after we were on the line for three days and their website collapsed. ”

Other insureds who can be vaccinated now said that while they got themselves a queue since they themselves were 60 and over, their parents were left without a queue. “My husband and I were vaccinated in Karmiel yesterday, he is 70 years old and I am 67 years old,” says Esti Fried from Kiryat Bialik. “For my 90-year-old mother, who has a much higher level of risk, my husband was only able to find an appointment for February 28, here in the Krayot. We took this appointment, but it’s terribly late. My mother was terribly disappointed. We wanted to save her the “The trip to Carmiel yesterday, but we were so sorry that we saw that in the vaccine center itself, everything ticked and worked great. We had to take her with us, but it is not easy for her to make this trip.”

“We also thought of going to Shefar’am and getting vaccinated there, but we found nothing. All the appointments were for February or March. I missed my mother, but we will not give up and try to get ahead of the queue. If we do not succeed, we will just reach one of the vaccine complexes.” “There are no queues and when we try we get a voicemail that cannot be answered,” Fried said.

“I tried to make an appointment for my 81-year-old father,” says Anat Shchori from Herzliya, who also tried to make an appointment for her father, Shlomo. “After hours of waiting on the line they gave us a queue in February. My father told me that all his friends from other funds were vaccinated. He was very upset. He has been locked up at home for almost a year and when there are vaccines here they say the older population is vaccinated first. “We found out not. I am so frustrated that I am considering moving to another HMO. I tried to reach the hotline for a few days and we tried through the app, and it was impossible.”

“The main load is concentrated in the morning,” said Efrat, who visited the unified call center of the HMOs in Kiryat Gat this morning. “One of the operators of the compound admitted that many vaccinators sometimes arrive at 07:00, even if the queue is 12:00. I feel it was too crowded. It’s not a big place and I did not see anyone count how many people are inside. Stores of this size “Less people. Elderly people have not left the house for months, and suddenly they are out – they just want to get vaccinated quickly and return home.”

At a general clinic on Rothschild Street in Petah Tikva, many people gathered in their pockets this morning for the vaccination center. “There were a lot of people there, all from a risk group,” an eyewitness said. “They were crowded near the place where the vaccinations were done. There were two groups, one arrived with a summons but did not enter. Some came from afar. “.

She added that “a truck with more vaccines was supposed to arrive and then another group of people came to get vaccinated, and it created a ‘bottleneck’. A lot of people were waiting outside and it created chaos. The second group was of adults who could not get a vaccination queue, those who could not catch The hotline or did not get along with the app. They went into stress and came to the HMO to get the vaccine no matter what. There was a mess of people who arrived without a queue and were stressed. “There were a lot of nerves there today.”

“I’ve been waiting since 11 in the morning and now it’s one o’clock,” said Leah Alkalay, who came to get vaccinated at the clinic today. “It’s just unbelievable. “And if there is no vaccine, why are we not informed? Yesterday I waited 49 minutes at the center and were disconnected. Only the third time I was able to get an appointment with my mother.”

Meanwhile, Maccabi set up a “drive-in” vaccination complex at the Sami Ofer Stadium in Haifa, similar to the corona testing complexes, where we vaccinated about 3,000 insured persons. Dr. Galit Kaufman, director of the Northern District of Maccabi, said that this is a one-of-a-kind complex. “We want to prevent the crowd, we want the healthy people to come here, to be vaccinated safely inside their vehicle. They should not get out of the vehicle. There is a huge waiting area here, they can stay in the car, they get a bottle of water, there is a nurse who walks around car-car and checks how they are and how they are. We are very excited. “Everyone comes here in droves, the place is very busy, very lively.”

Dr. Kaufman addressed the concern about the vaccine and said that “I think that as time goes on and a lot more people get vaccinated, then there is less concern. Obviously you hear more voices. There are other places where the response is less high, but I think that as time goes on and the target population is vaccinated and it opens up to the general public, I have no doubt that the response will be high. The queues are full. “

Today, the Ministry of Health announced that Minister Yuli Edelstein instructed CEO Prof. Hezi Levy to take action to ensure that hospitals also vaccinate the population, in addition to the health funds, as early as next week. This is to significantly increase the rate of vaccinations in Israel.

Clalit Health Fund responded Clalit is prepared to vaccinate more than two-thirds of the elderly population in Israel at a rate of more than 40,000 vaccines a day. The temporary load indicates a high response rate to the population’s vaccines and we welcome that. Everything to reach every patient. “

Vaccinations for nursing home residents officially began yesterday. According to MDA data, 200,000 residents across the country are expected to be vaccinated in the coming round.

“I so want it to pass from the world, because it has cut off part of my life,” Mazur said. “I’ve been here not long, a year and four months. But four months I made a crazy life, there were plays, lectures, classes and everything. When this damn plague broke out, then everything stopped here and there and I thank the management of the place they caught it at the beginning, they “We closed a lot of things. We claimed it was wrong, but today after nine months, ten months we say thank you very much. I am waiting for the mask to come off and there will be no risk, that not every Monday and Thursday they will do a corona test.”