State legislators will get the chance to question Gov. Charlie Baker this week regarding the state's bumpy COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Baker, along with Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders, will testify before the Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness on Thursday - the first of what could be a series of hearings.
Massachusetts State Rep. Bill Driscoll, who serves as co-chair of the committee, spoke to Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about what he hopes to accomplish during the hearing and how the state can improve the vaccine rollout.
"We've invited these policy makers forward to try to get a better understanding of why seemingly the state was so underprepared for this rollout and to understand where we are now and where we're going," he said. "We certainly [are] holding the administration accountable to make some improvements here so that the vaccine accessibility and rollout goes a lot smoother in the months ahead."
Driscoll spoke about the challenges that the state's vaccine registration website poses for people who don't have the tech-savviness or assistance to register themselves. He noted the legislature's consideration of forming a centralized pre-registration site.
"It's certainly something that we're looking at and we're looking at what other states are doing around this and their order of operations," he said. "One of the real challenges here is the current way of operating where we've put the onus on individuals to make their appointments in such short windows of time."
Legislators have had regular communication with the state's COVID-19 Response Command Center, led by Sudders, Driscoll said.
"She's worked through some really tough problems so far, and I have confidence that if they're thinking about the right things - that's what I want to make sure they are - in their planning and operations that they can improve this," he said. "Now we're in a crossroads here with this vaccine rollout and the beginning of the end of the pandemic."
