Erie County was forced to cancel its vaccination clinics this week because of low supply resulting in thousands of Erie County residents set to receive their first round of the COVID-19 vaccines now having to wait.

News 4 (WIVB-TV) spoke with a number of essential employees who spent up to 90 minutes on the phone just to schedule their appointment, dealing with the resulting frustration.

“I mean I’m ready to get back to normalcy, I mean even if it’s a new normal so it’s just extremely disappointing really.” said Medical Assistant Brittany Kasza.

Akron Elementary School Teacher Karen Stachowiak said...

“I understand that glitches are going to happen but please do the right thing and don’t put us at the back of the line we had an appointment.”

Approximately 3,500 people in Erie County were told their vaccine appointments scheduled for this week are canceled.

“Needless to say I wanted to cry just because I never thought I’d be so excited to get a vaccination as I was for this one,” said Stachowiak.

In addition to teaching at Akron Elementary Stachowiak also cares for her parents.

Due to a dramatic cut in the number of vaccines the county will receive, all appointments scheduled Monday through Wednesday at the Department of Health’s distribution clinics have been canceled.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said,

“This is my understanding, a supply issue. I think everyone across the state is being treated the same, just like everyone across the county. It’s very disappointing and once we get more supply we can vaccinate more people but it’s out of our hands.”

Infectious disease expert Dr. Thomas Russo despite the supply delay and frustration it is encouraging that people want to be vaccinated.

Dr. Russo says, “a trivial setback of a few days based on supply which reflects the fact that one people are interested in getting vaccinated, we’ve also expanded the individuals that are eligible and we now have the processes in place to be able to make the appointments and vaccinate them.”

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