There's a secret world of 'vaccine hunters' and they're finding shots that would otherwise expire

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They’re called “vaccine hunters,” and if you haven’t heard of them, that’s okay with them. They're a tight knit group who aim to help people find vaccine doses that might otherwise get tossed.

COVID-19 vaccines are mostly being doled out to those people 65 years or older and rightfully so, that’s the community most at risk. But, there’s another group of people who want the vaccine, who don’t fall into that group, and they’ll do almost anything to get it.

They wait until after hours for unused vaccine doses. They stand in lines, in the dark or cold until everyone else with appointments has been served and they hope for a leftover shot.

There’s a Facebook with over 2,000 members called NOLA Vaccine Hunter. It was created by Orange County resident, Brad Johnson, a medical student at Tulane University in New Orleans.

"It is a Facebook group designed for people to share information about vaccines at these sites that are soon to expire, leftover doses that would otherwise be thrown away," Johnson told NBC 7 in San Diego.

The group was launched by Johnson to overcome what he calls "a government failure" in the vaccine rollout.

"I've previously described it as a 'patchwork of chaos.' There's no organization whatsoever and it's hard for people, citizens like you and me to figure out where they can get a vaccine,” Johnson said.

Johnson's Facebook group isn’t the only one. There’s another based in San Diego called SD Vaccine Info, and it's designed to help those who’re desperate to find a place to get a vaccine for themselves or their parents.

"COVID-19 vaccines are an important & precious resource, and unfortunately, many doses are thrown away every day. In this group, we will collect & share information about places where people of any age can get vaccinated without restrictions and *not* at someone else's expense," a statement on the Facebook group reads. Adding: "Thanks to the peculiarities around the extremely cold storage that the COVID vaccines require, there are rare occasions where "spare doses" may go unused & should be made available to anyone including young people. When a distribution site defrosts a tray with 100s of vials, they must use all the doses within 5 days -- before, according to protocol, the remaining doses must be thrown out. So what happens when not enough old folk have shown up to get their jab and the open tray still has precious doses left about to expire that day? Sites should start letting anyone they can find through the door!"