By appointment only: health officials asking people to wait their turn for COVID-19 vaccinations

WOODBRIDGE, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - If you don’t have an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine, area health officials are begging you not to just show up.

"We probably turned away a good 50 of them," explained Sean Johnson – and the Prince William Health District Joint Information Center coordinator was only talking about one day in one county. In fact, they’ve dealt with the issue so much in Prince William County, they tweeted out a graphic last weekend, announcing, "NO WALK-INS … Appointments Only!"

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"I witnessed myself probably a group of 25, 28 at the end of the day being told all the vaccines are used, there’s nothing left over, and they all walked off," Johnson added.

To some extent, it’s been an issue elsewhere too. That includes in Montgomery County, where last month people shared links for vaccination appointments despite being asked not to do so, leading to long lines of people, many of whom weren’t actually eligible.

"The people who weren’t eligible weren’t always willing to leave when we asked them to leave," recalled Mary Anderson, the public information officer for Montgomery County Health and Human Services.

It’s one example of why officials for both counties said security issues, as well as COVID issues, can arise from people showing up at vaccination sites without an appointment.

"We don’t want people waiting outside for unnecessary lengths of time, we don’t want people to be packed in a line because again, that goes against all the advice we’ve been giving," Anderson said.

Both Anderson and Johnson also said that even if their counties did have doses leftover at the end of the day, they wouldn’t just give them away, adding that they have lists of people who are already eligible for the vaccines that they’d go ahead and call.