Improvised vacinating effort, pharmacist goes to senior housing facilities.

In a city scrambling to vaccinate people against Covid-19 as quickly as possible, Ambar Keluskar faced a problem this month that seemed to defy logic: Mr. Keluskar, a pharmacist in Brooklyn, struggled to find people to take the 200 doses he had on hand.

“They were just sitting in the freezer,” he said.

State rules restricted who could get shots at independent pharmacies like his to certain older residents, and fewer and fewer people seemed to be scheduling appointments. The problem was even more vexing because his pharmacy, Rossi Pharmacy, draws many customers from East New York, a community hit hard by the pandemic and where the vaccination rate lags behind other parts of New York City.

Mr. Keluskar’s pharmacy spent hundreds of dollars on Facebook advertisements to let people know he had available doses. He asked community leaders to spread the word. Then he decided to try a different way to reach people who may otherwise be overlooked: Instead of waiting for them to come to the pharmacy, he would take his doses to them.

Mr. Keluskar’s experience reflects the many ways in which a disorganized vaccine rollout has forced officials and distributors to constantly retool their approaches while confronting messy realities on the ground.

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Despite officials’ insistence on equity, vaccinations have been slower to reach many communities where the virus has inflicted the highest toll, and where people may not have the time or resources to easily sign up for appointments.

In response to these problems, volunteers and community groups have gotten creative, building appointment websites that improve on the official offerings, hosting pop-up clinics at churches and helping eligible neighbors navigate the confusing landscape.

Among the people seeking to fill that void was Mr. Keluskar, who earlier this month, following a tip from a state senator’s office, vaccinated almost 50 people at a senior affordable housing complex near Downtown Brooklyn who were homebound or struggling to find appointments elsewhere. On Saturday, he vaccinated more than 150 people at Ingersoll Houses, a public housing complex in Fort Greene. He said he would ask for a bigger allocation of doses to do more pop-up style events in communities in need. ...