DANVILLE – During a media briefing Friday, Geisinger President and CEO Dr. Jaewon Ryu says the COVID-19 vaccine distribution is ‘not straight forward or simple.” That’s because of vigorous staffing required to drawing up and administering files and collecting data, along with trying to keep freezers at extreme cold temperatures.
“Because of the ultra-freezers…when you open a freezer to take a vaccine tray out, you can’t open the freezer again for two hours because it’s got to get reset to go back to those ultra-freezing temperatures,” he said.
Now that the state has expanded the current Phase ‘1A’ to include people 65 and older and those age 16-64 with certain health conditions, over 80,000 appointments were made across the Geisinger system in just the first two and a half days.
That’s also created big time call volumes, “Prior to COVID, on a typical day in our call center we might see about 17,000 calls per day. Now we are consistently seeing it double or even triple that level of call traffic. Of course, we were preparing for this and we added more resources and staffing and extended those hours.”
To avoid waiting on the phone, Geisinger is encouraging people making appointments to do so online or by using myGeisinger, if you’re a patient within the system. You can hear Dr. Ryu’s remarks on the WKOK podcast page HERE.
