People hoping to received a COVID-19 vaccine in Summit County can now sign up through Colorado’s new preregistration system.

The county will be using a list of eligible people collected via CoMassVax.org to make vaccine appointments, Public Health Director Amy Wineland said at a Board of Health meeting Thursday, Feb. 18. The previous system of sending out a registration link when appointments become available no longer will be used locally.

The preregistration link will be used only by the county’s public health department. Other providers such as Centura Health, the Summit Community Care Clinic, City Market and Safeway will continue to use separate registration links, which still can be found at SummitCountyCO.gov/vaccine when appointments are available.

Through the new preregistration link, county officials will be able to see a list of people who have registered. When appointments become available for one of public health’s vaccination drive-thru events, officials randomly will select eligible individuals for appointments.

Once a person is selected for an appointment, they will receive an email with a link to sign up for a slot. If people don’t respond to the email within 24 hours, the spot will be given to someone else, Wineland said. People also will have the ability to cancel their appointment if they no longer can make it.

Wineland said the previous system of alerting people about available appointments and then opening up a link was difficult for staff members to manage. The new system will allow people to constantly be on the county’s list and not have to go back online each week in hopes of getting an appointment.

“We’re really hopeful that this will decrease the anxiety that has been happening both within our community and within our staff,” she said.

People who want to be on the list for vaccine appointments should go to CoMassVax.org. Anyone can sign up, regardless of their eligibility in the current phase.

The preregistration link also allows people to sign up for as many counties as they want. The link asks people which county they live in, but people can submit multiple registrations for different counties.

Local public health officials will look at those who chose Summit County on their lists. So if people want to be vaccinated in Summit, they should choose Summit County under the “county” menu.

“We know that the allocation of vaccine is not equal right now,” county spokesperson Nicole Valentine said. “There are appointments available in other counties. So we really want individuals to leave themselves open to as many options as possible.”

The county will continue to set aside vaccines for people who might not have access to internet or a computer to preregister, Wineland said. The county has been working with community partners, such as the Department of Human Services and the Summit Community Care Clinic, to identify those individuals.

The preregistration also gives the county the ability to filter out those who are not eligible for the vaccine and prioritize people who are 70 and older and health care workers who have not yet had the first dose.

The registration system also gives people the option to choose which job they work to determine eligibility. However, Lauren Gilbert, public health nurse and head of the contact-tracing team, said educators and child care workers should avoid using the registration link at this time.

Public health officials are still planning to work directly with employers to schedule vaccine appointments for that population.

It’s important to note that the new link doesn’t mean there are more vaccines. Wineland said the county has requested 2,000 doses for next week. How much the county actually receives is up in the air, though. The county requested a similar amount last week and received only 100.