Hiccups in Milwaukee's vaccine rollout leaves some with questions

MILWAUKEE - The City of Milwaukee’s Health Department will begin vaccinating people who are 65 and older next Monday.

The system for seniors to sign up for vaccination is also expected to be up and running, but we’re also learning of the barriers the health department has had to overcome in the vaccine rollout.

The interim health commissioner was honest during a recent meeting. She explained the challenges the health department faced in the pandemic from a lack of funding to a lack of resources.

Milwaukee’s Interim Health Commissioner Marlaina Jackson says there have been difficulties in rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine in the city.

"Some of the tools that I think we need to do our job we just didn’t have," Jackson said.

She says Milwaukee did not have an electronic medical record system.

"There are several things I think we should share, being underfunded and being a health department that did not have electronic medical records set up prior to the pandemic is an extreme barrier in doing this," Jackson said.

Last week the State of Wisconsin opened the COVID-19 vaccine to those 65 and older starting January 25th. But, seniors in Milwaukee who want their vaccine with the health department can’t yet register because the system to book an appointment won't be available until next week.

"It is confusing. I do want to share just general disappointment that I feel we’ve known a vaccine was coming for some time…" Alderwoman Marina Dimitrijevic said.

She expressed disappointment, during Thursday's public safety and health committee meeting.

"I really don’t understand why we couldn't have had a registration system a few months ago?" Ald. Dimitrijevic said.

Jackson also told the committee the health department has been "nimble" while facing several challenges at once including a large spike in cases a few months ago

"We continue to work the contact tracing, we continue to work our testing front and enforcement fronts," Commissioner Jackson said.

Alderwoman Dimitrijevic also raised concerns on whether the largest city in the state was receiving the proportional amount of the vaccine. She did thank Jackson for her honesty on the difficulties of vaccine rollout.

"Thank you for telling it like it is and getting that out there on the record," Ald. Dimitrijevic said.

Commissioner Jackson says the health department is pushing to get more vaccine doses from the state.

Right now, seniors in Milwaukee can go to healthymke.com and sign up for alerts for when the registration system launches next week.