The frustration and ire in Newtown resident Ted Selker’s voice was palpable when he first called The Newtown Bee for help in January shortly after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont announced the state would be rolling out COVID-19 vaccines for anyone over age 75 who wanted one.

At the time, Selker was 80 years old — he has since celebrated a birthday — and he, like many others in the newly qualified candidate pool in Connecticut and around the country, felt barraged with conflicting details, unable to access the information he needed to pre-register for the shot.

He had learned a neighboring community was already compiling a list of eligible residents, even before the governor’s formal announcement that vaccine distributions were beginning. He knew that his cohorts in local nursing homes and assisted living complexes were either readying for their first round of shots or had already received them.

“I tried every place I could think of to get information,” he said.

His calls to a state clearinghouse phone line only stymied him more, as he was left parked on hold for extended periods without ever getting through to anyone who could clarify what, exactly, was happening, and how he could get in line for his two virus inoculations.

“Knowing The Bee generally knew what was going on,” Selker said, as a last resort he decided to try calling the paper to see if he could confirmed, reliable local information. On that call, he learned that Newtown was in the final stages of setting up its own database through the Health District, and pertinent details from the governor’s most recent press releases, received by the paper earlier that day, were read to him over the phone.

A promise to circle back once new information was available locally was fulfilled quickly when Newtown opened up its registration system the very next day. Minutes after Selker received that key referral, he said, he got on the computer and had completed his local preregistration within a few minutes.

Reaching Out

While state and local health and municipal officials work to establish, expand, and iron out the bugs in registering qualified people for the highly sought after vaccine, anxious citizens, like Selker, are getting important and potentially life-saving support regarding the COVID vaccines from local journalists.

When Florida began administering vaccines in late December, the registration process was different in each of the state’s 67 counties. In Leon County, home to the state capital, Tallahassee Democrat reporter CD Davidson-Hiers found herself in the middle of that chaos.

Davidson-Hiers told NPR that she got nearly 60 calls the first day, and then hundreds more after that; she sees taking those calls from readers as part of her mission as a reporter.

“That’s the beauty of local news, is you are available to your community,” she said.

Madeline Heim, a USA Today reporter in Wisconsin, wrote on February 4, “A lot of the phone calls I’ve answered over the last week have started with, ‘Please help me.’ Over the course of two days, I fielded more than 100 phone calls and two dozen e-mails from seniors and their families who were anxious for help tracking down the vaccine,” she wrote.

“Across the country, people are asking local journalists for help — in part because our contact information is readily available, like mine is at the end of this story,” Heim continued. “More than once, callers have told me they’re just grateful to reach a human being who will listen to their concerns.”

Anita Lee, a senior staff writer at the Biloxi, Mississippi-based Sun Herald told Kerry Flynn of CNN Business that she has not gotten up much from her computer lately. Not only does she keep news articles updated, but she has also been helping individuals make appointments.

“I stay on the phone with people and try to help them figure out which website is going to be the best one,” Lee told CNN Business. “In the case of a lot of the elderly folks, they’re going to need phone numbers. A lot of our print readers — and they’re loyal print readers — are not able to get online.”

Not every call, text, or e-mail has a specific ask. Journalists have listened to community members air their grievances, as well.

Soumya Karlamangla, health reporter at the Los Angeles Times, said she “feels like people just tweet their anxieties at me.”

“I think a key part of this has been validating how frustrated people are, and worried, and anxious,” Davidson-Hiers told CNN Business in another interview. “The information, of course, is helpful, it’s factual, but just being a sounding board” is also important.

Getting Vaccinated

In Newtown, Selker found both an outlet for both his frustrations as well as the route to registration for the vaccine. He share with The Newtown Bee the news that he completed his second round at Danbury Hospital on the snowy morning of February 8.

“Despite the fact it was a crappy weather day, once I got over to Danbury Hospital I was amazed at how smoothly this second round went,” Selker said. “And be sure to write in your story how wonderful everybody has been through both visits, from the valet parking staff to the security guard who helped me find where to go, to everyone else I encountered.”

Selker, who turned 81 February 1, said he had no immediate or after effects from his first vaccine, and except for some left arm tenderness, no other side effects from his second round, either. But had he not reached out, Selker suggested, he still might be waiting.

“It was due to your information that I went to the Newtown municipal website, and just like you described, there was a red banner indicating I should click on it for preregistration for the shot, which I did do,” he said. “I filled out the form and two days later I got an e-mail asking me to complete another form.”

This directive was to get Selker into the Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS) database, which was significantly more troublesome, and not only for him; VAMS was also the point where a number of other acquaintances and family members began “running into difficulties.”

“The questions were quite simple, but if you made the slightest error, you had to start the whole form over again,” he said. “It just took forever.”

Selker later determined he was getting stuck because he was putting his birthday in as “02/01” instead of writing out “February 1.”

“It wasn’t accepting it and it wasn’t telling me why,” he said. “And so many others have told me the biggest problem they had was completing this [VAMS] form.”

Recalling Round One

Once the VAMS system confirmed Selker was registered, he was directed to find a vaccine distribution location and eventually established an appointment for his first round shot at Danbury Hospital on January 22.

While his second visit was comparatively quick and easy, his first visit involved intake paperwork and a substantially longer wait in a line of others who were also scheduled for the vaccine that day.

Despite those slight inconveniences, Selker said everyone he encountered “was extremely helpful and courteous.”

When he completed his registration paperwork, Selker said a nurse noticed he was walking with a cane and immediately got him a wheelchair to ease his trip to the vaccination clinic, which was some distance away.

Once he arrived there, he had to complete additional forms and was then taken to a waiting area before lining up on a staircase to get into the room where the shots were being given.

“I never even felt the needle — it was a very pleasant experience,” he said. After a brief post-vaccination wait to ensure there were no immediate side effects, another hospital staffer took Selker, again in the wheelchair, back to the front door, where a valet was waiting to bring up his car.

Speaking to his Newtown neighbors and anyone who is eligible to receive the vaccine, Selker said, “After having experienced almost a full year of leaving the house about once a month for groceries, and being afraid to go out otherwise — getting a couple of shots and a sore arm is well worth it to access the freedom you’ll enjoy once it’s all over with.”