AS soon as Emily Wheatley was eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, she jumped online to make an appointment - but initial system glitches meant getting one was easier said than done.
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"I put in a lot of hours just trying to get that first appointment," Ms Wheatley, of Marmong Point, said. "I was going on three times a day to get that Pfizer booking, and when I finally got one, I was doing air punches to receive a slot."
But like thousands of other Hunter residents, Ms Wheatley had her appointment for her first dose at the Belmont hub cancelled - a decision NSW Health may come to regret should sewage detections of COVID-19 in Belmont, Burwood and Shortland catchments lead to positive cases.
Ms Wheatley's efforts to secure an AstraZeneca shot since have not yet yielded an appointment, with many GPs not offering appointments for weeks, and others not vaccinating people under 60.
The Belmont hub has just opened bookings for AstraZeneca, but when Ms Wheatley tried to make an appointment, she received an email advising she had "exceeded the number of activation link requests" in the eligibility checker.
"The government is now talking about offering incentives for vaccination," she said. "The only incentive I need is an available appointment. I'm not frightened of AstraZeneca - most of my family has had it. But I'm the only person in my immediate family who hasn't had the privilege of getting a vaccine. I'm also the only one living in the Newcastle area."
Ms Wheatley is yet to receive the priority booking code from NSW Health that would enable her to re-book her Pfizer appointment.
"Because the time between the first and the second dose is much longer with AstraZeneca, there is a tipping point where if you have to wait a little bit longer to get the Pfizer, you might still be fully vaccinated earlier than with AZ," she said. "But we are very much in the dark, we don't have all the information to make our choices at the moment, because we don't know how long we are going to have to wait."
She needed to speak to her GP to see whether her history of heart and vascular procedures put her at risk.
"There are people who want to be vaccinated but are finding it challenging to navigate the system and are getting increasingly frustrated by the messages being fed to them by politicians and even the people around them, who think it's easy because they were able to get theirs done.
"I almost feel like giving up. Because the messages I'm receiving is that it's my fault, and I feel a bit broken."
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