Legacy Drugstores in Warrenton and Wright City are now able to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to area residents. Staff at the small pharmacies say registrations have to be done entirely online in order to handle the high volume of requests.

Pharmacy manager Mitch Graumenz said Legacy has seen a huge influx of people wanting to get signed up for shots since the state began distributing doses for pharmacies earlier this month. In order to handle those registrations, Legacy has set up an automated sign up system through its website, www.legacydrug.com.

Importantly, Legacy isn’t able to offer a pre-registration system because of the heavy staffing requirements for that method. The pharmacy is instead opening registrations every week on Sunday or Monday as vaccine doses become available from the state. The number of doses being delivered is the number of appointments Legacy makes.

“The problem we’re experiencing is we don’t know how many doses we’re getting until the state ships them to us,” Graumenz said. “We post appointments on Monday and they’ll get booked for the next week, and then we’ll get 300 or 400 calls over the next few days from people asking about appointments.”

Graumenz said opening limited online-only registrations every week guarantees that everyone who is able to sign up will get a dose of the vaccine. 

Legacy is following state mandates about who is eligible to receive the vaccine. Vaccinations are free, although anyone who has Medicare or health insurance will have their insurance billed for the service.

Legacy is also taking special care to make sure some doses of vaccine are available for people over age 65 who don’t have internet access to make appointments. Only in that limited situation, with no way to sign up online, should a senior or their caregiver contact the pharmacy directly for help with an appointment, Graumenz advised.

He added that just being able to receive doses of COVID vaccine was very difficult to set up, with a lot of government red tape to go through.

“I’ve got a cabinet full of paperwork we had to fill out to get the vaccine,” Graumenz commented. “We signed up in December, and we waited until March to get our first doses.”

Graumenz thanked the Lions Club in Wright City for giving pharmacists a place to host a wave of nearly 500 vaccination appointments that were set up for last weekend. He said most appointments are being made at the pharmacies, rather than in large events.