Maryland announced Monday that it would begin Phase 1C of the state’s coronavirus vaccination rollout, but officials in Montgomery County say they’re lagging behind schedule.

The county is now vaccinating residents ages 75 and older, and residents in lower-priority groups can begin preregistering for vaccine appointments online today at noon, health officials told members of the Montgomery County Council on Tuesday. But many residents have received mixed messages about when they can actually receive a shot, officials conceded.

The main problem is demand for vaccine has outstripped supply, said the county’s health department in a press release distributed on Tuesday. More than 50,000 residents at least 75 years old have preregistered for appointments, while the county receives an average of 6,000 doses per week.

But the shortage is being worsened by confusing messaging from the county and the state and residents who are signing up for appointments improperly, Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director Dr. Earl Stoddard told lawmakers.

While the state sends out information about vaccinations on the statewide schedule, county residents have been disappointed to find that the county isn’t on the same page. At the same time, individuals who have received links to sign up for vaccine appointments are sharing the links with friends, family and other members of the public, Stoddard said, creating confusion at vaccination sites. Hundreds of people in lower-priority groups have been turned away from appointments as a result.

“Then we look like the bad guys who have to cancel out their appointments,” Stoddard told councilmembers.

Montgomery County resident Adina Cohen, who has been volunteering at a county vaccination clinic in White Oak, tells DCist that she saw residents 75 years and older being denied vaccines last week. While most of Maryland had already moved to Phase 1B at that point, Cohen says the county was only vaccinating healthcare workers, first responders and law enforcement officers in Phase 1A.

“I was immediately uncomfortable when I was instructed that we were only accepting [health care workers and first responders’] appointments and would need to reject anyone who arrived that was [75 years or older],” Cohen said.

According to Stoddard, the county will be forced to cancel appointments for ineligible residents as long as the state’s preregistration system allows people to share appointment links and sign up before they’re actually eligible for a vaccine.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Hogan said he had spoken to leaders in both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties about people sharing the links for appointments.

“This is an old system that is run by a private contractor that was for other types of vaccines and other things. I think we’ve addressed the issue. People were going on there mistakenly and trying to book appointments. It was for other types of medical things and flu shots. It’s not where you should be going,” Hogan said.

Maryland’s acting secretary of Health, Dennis Schrader added that the state had decided to build a more robust system for COVID vaccines that is expected to be completed within the next day or so.

“The volume and the scale of what we need for COVID is so much greater that this particular website isn’t going to be able to handle that volume, but we don’t want to cut it off because it’s important to citizens,” he said.

It’s also difficult to understand who is next in line for a vaccine when some private providers receiving doses from the state are on a different schedule than the county’s health department, Councilmember Gabe Albornoz said.

“We now have what feels like the wild wild west, he said, adding that council members are working on a joint letter to Gov. Larry Hogan that he says will try to “clarify issues we don’t have control over in the county.”

The number of vaccines given to local health departments in Maryland does not include the number of vaccines provided to hospitals, pharmacies and other private providers, according to Schrader. Residents are able to register for vaccines through those different systems, meaning one resident could be taking up multiple registration slots.

“There’s no unified system at the state level,” said Dr. Raymond Crowel, director of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services. “Preregistration is very much an honor system.”

The rollout has also been plagued by equity issues, as white residents have signed up for vaccine appointments at much higher rates than everyone else, a similar problem that has been evident in D.C. and Virginia.

More than 70% of Montgomery County residents who have preregistered for the vaccine are white, according to health department data, while white residents make up 60% of the county’s population. Just 6% of pre-registrants identify as Black, while 20% of the county’s population is Black or African American. Latino residents are signing up in similarly disproportionate numbers.

The county is working to establish a call center so residents who lack reliable internet access can sign up for shots, Crowel said. “Access is going to be an ongoing challenge to many folks,” he said.

Councilmember Craig Rice agreed, adding that he waited four hours to pre-register his mother for a vaccine at Giant, only to find out no more slots were available.

“And that’s fine” for relatively advantaged people like himself, Rice said, who have the time to sit for hours waiting to pre-register. Many residents don’t have that advantage, he said. “The whole system is set up to be inequitable from the start.”

Montgomery County has more than 1 million residents — as of last week, it was allocated 1.9 vaccines per 100 people by the state. Prince George’s County, with more than 900,000 residents, was allocated 1.6 vaccines per 100 residents, according to state health department data cross-referenced with Census data. By comparison, Calvert County, which has a little less than 92,000 people, was given 4.3 vaccines per 100 residents, and Kent County, with just 19,500 residents, was given 8.2 vaccines per 100 residents.

Prince George’s County won’t be able to vaccinate people in phase 1C until Saturday, per officials.

Montgomery County residents who receive an invitation to make a vaccination appointment this week are being prioritized according to ZIP code, Crowel says, as the county focuses on residents of hardest-hit communities first.

“As a practical matter, attacking this virus in places where it has the greatest toehold, where it has had the greatest impact, is how we’re going to kill it,” Crowel said.

This post was updated to include comments from Gov. Larry Hogan.