If you are waiting to hear about getting your COVID-19 vaccination, be sure to answer your phone.

A friend who volunteers to make calls to set up appointments told me recently that when they call, they do not leave a message if there is no answer. I have caller ID and usually don’t answer my phone unless the phone can identify the caller because so many junk and scam calls use the 970 area code.

Sure enough, a couple of hours after my friend told me about this, I received a call – which my phone identified as “Caller Unknown” without even a 970 number – and I answered and it was Southwest Medical calling to set up an appointment for me the next day.

I see on the TV news that New Mexico has a state-wide registration system – and I assume when they call to set up an appointment, there would be an identification that it is about the COVID-19 vaccination. I don’t understand why, all of last year, Colorado state and local public health officials didn’t work to set up a transparent system to register and later contact people who want the vaccine. We could have had a state-wide registration system through toll-free numbers and online registration and then when they call to make an appointment the phone identifies the call as “COVID-19 Vaccine” or something similar.

I hope our federal, state and local officials learn from this experience and set up a much better vaccination system, because there surely will be more pandemics down the road.

Jim Fusco

Cortez