As voters search for vaccines, Queens council candidates become case managers
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Council District 29 candidate David Aronov said he has helped nearly 100 older adults in and around Forest Hills make COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Campaign photo
By David Brand
Phyllis Goldberg, a Forest Hills retiree, spent three weeks trying to book a COVID vaccine appointment until a chance encounter with a city council candidate allowed her to finally get her shot.
Goldberg said a friend forwarded her an email from David Aronov, a former NYC Census team director running for an open seat in Council District 29. For the past several weeks, Aronov has been reaching out to older voters in the district and offering to help them book appointments online.
“I sent him an email and he said he’s working on it,” Goldberg recalled. “A week and a half later, he called and said he made an appointment.”
Aronov also arranged transportation for Goldberg to travel to Martin Van Buren High School for the vaccine. In two weeks, she’ll return for dose two, she said.
Aronov is one of a handful of city council candidates connecting with would-be constituents and offering to help secure vaccine appointments, particularly for older voters frustrated by the online registration process. The vaccine initiatives build on mutual aid efforts dating back to the early days of the pandemic, when state and federal candidates fused COVID relief with traditional campaigning.
“If you’re not tech savvy or you have technological difficulties, you’re not going to be able to do this,” Aronov said. “The point is to really ensure those who really need the vaccines can get it and not jump through hoops and hurdles and then eventually give up.”
He said he has helped nearly 100 older adults in and around Forest Hills make vaccine appointments using Turbovax, which aggregates appointment information from various sites. He said he compiles residents’ information in a spreadsheet and immediately seizes on open appointments when he receives Twitter notifications from Turbovax.
“Yesterday, I was able to do over 20 people and they’re all in Queens,” he said Feb. 25.
Other council candidates are performing similar case management work.
Harpreet Toor is running for an open seat in Council District 23 and said he has compiled a list of hundreds of Queens residents seeking shots, particularly in his Northeast Queens district and further south in Richmond Hill. He said many are taxi drivers and food service workers who qualify at the Citi Field vaccine hub but have been unable to register.
“I end up trying to guide them to make an appointment, and I will make the appointment or guide their kids who may know more about technology,” Toor said. “Have I succeeded? Yes. Have I succeeded 100 percent? No, but I have helped a few dozen people.”
Toor is a former chairperson and president of the Sikh Cultural Society of Richmond Hill, which hosted a one-day vaccine drive last month. More than 450 people got their first shots there on Feb. 12, he said.
Linda Lee, another candidate in Council District 23, runs an organization that also hosted a state vaccine drive last month. Nearly 500 people were vaccinated during a two-day drive at the Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York, she said.
Lee said she has since begun helping district residents make their appointments online each day.
“It’s so hard for our communities to navigate the sites, particularly because of the language barrier and the tech divide,” Lee said. “It’s important because we need to make sure the vaccine is being equitably distributed.”
