When Louisiana expanded the vaccine’s eligibility earlier this week to anyone over the age of 16 with a long list of medical conditions, the state moved overnight to one of the most open states in the U.S. with respect to whom. you can have an injection.
It is estimated that nearly three out of four adults in Louisiana meet the broad category of “overweight” or “obesity” that would allow them to receive a coronavirus vaccine and potentially many more would be eligible due to other medical conditions, such as cancer and “smoking” under new rules released Tuesday.
Dr. Shantel Hebert-Magee, the newly appointed medical director for Region 1 for the Louisiana Department of Health, estimated that, along with previous eligibility rules that allowed everyone over 65 and a few other groups to have a chance, “we’re practically covering 80% to 90% of our population.”
“A significant portion of our population has comorbidities,” she said.
The approach is more comprehensive than that of many states, which have put more bureaucracy around eligibility, limiting types of conditions or requiring people to be of a certain age to qualify.
The effort to vaccinate the Louisianans against the coronavirus aims to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible, prioritizing the field …
For example, Louisiana is one of only three states in the country to be open to 16-year-olds with one of nearly two dozen conditions.
The state allows conditions that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider to increase the risk of serious illnesses, such as obesity and cancer, but is also part of a second broader list. That list includes conditions like asthma, body mass index over 25 or type 1 diabetes.
Many states select and choose diseases from both lists, but do not include all of them. Texas, for example, includes 11 of the 12 most at risk conditions, but omits smoking. Ohio does not allow heart disease or cancer, but it does allow people with Down syndrome and sickle cell disease to be vaccinated. Some states require two or more vaccination conditions or limit the qualifications of the conditions to the elderly.
And while some states allow providers to decide whether a patient should be vaccinated, many others are much more restrictive. In New York, people over 60 have just become eligible this week, down from 65, although there is a carve-out for nonprofits and public officials.
“Louisiana is launching a broader network than many states,” said Jennifer Kates, a health policy analyst and researcher at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
At the back of a room roughly the size of two football fields, Mary Francis was sitting in a wheelchair, her daughter beside her. In front, a kimono …
Governor John Bel Edwards said on Tuesday that the decision to expand eligibility came after a “break” from consultations over the weekend and was made with the aim of preventing hospitalizations and deaths as more communicable variants gain ground.
“Our main objective when setting priorities for vaccination would be to preserve the hospital’s capacity and save lives. That is why we work with individuals with co-morbid health conditions that predispose them to a bad result, “he said.
Governor John Bel Edwards speaks at a news conference updating the state’s COVID-19 response, Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Edwards said on Tuesday that people aged 16 and over with certain health conditions are now eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine, a dramatic expansion in Louisiana’s efforts to overcome the pandemic. Sign language interpreter Sylvie Sullivan is in the background.
The new skills were developed with essential workers in mind, with the thought that the many conditions would qualify them. This is largely true, said Kates, but it is not true for everyone.
And some essential workers say they feel left behind.
Marjeta Wolfe is a 21-year-old restaurant receptionist in Jefferson Parish and a college student, where she is exposed to large groups of people indoors. She has a vocal cord problem and has been using an inhaler daily for eight years.
“My mom and I researched the ingredients on Google,” she said, trying to see if her inhaler counts as a corticosteroid. But she doesn’t make the cut.
Helen Woo, 49, is a nutritionist and nutritionist who works in a food pantry in New Orleans. It also does not qualify under the expanded guidelines.
“I know people who lied or traveled to another state to get a vaccine,” said Woo. “I do not want to do that. I’m not going to pretend I’m sick or dress like an old woman so I can get my injection. “
When people aged 70 and over became eligible in Louisiana for the coronavirus vaccine in January, New Orleans resident Phil Costa started calling …
Both Woo and Wolfe say they don’t want to break the rules or lie and are instead trying to find “leftover” vaccines, but are frustrated at not being included as essential workers.
“I feel that people like us, who provide essential services and interact with the public, should have some kind of priority over people who are working safely at home and not interacting with anyone,” said Woo.
The lack of focus on essential workers is something that epidemiologist Susan Hassig has observed happening across the country.
“I would say that you should be making vaccines aimed at the workplace, that we should have mobile units installed in the French Quarter, where there is a high density of restaurant workers,” said Hassig. “They don’t have a lot of control over how they can be exposed.”
Balancing vaccine distribution between disease risk and exposure risk is difficult, said Mike Springborn, a health resources economist at the University of California, Davis.
“There are exchanges all over the place,” he said, adding that in some cases the best method is to vaccinate vulnerable people directly, but in other conditions it is more important to simply reduce the spread in the wider community.
In early February 2020, doctors and scientists entered an auditorium at LSU’s medical school in New Orleans. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, …
One problem is that there is no reliable data on the effectiveness with which vaccines prevent transmission. Another problem is that some people may not realize that they have one of the qualifications.
Brenda Rainbolt’s family encouraged her to mark the smoke box to qualify, since she smoked 20 years ago, but the 64 year old lady felt it was a lie – besides, she needed to enter her insurance information and didn’t want to that this would affect coverage.
“I don’t feel comfortable marking that block when I say smoking,” said Rainbolt, who works in a public library and lives in Shreveport with his son, a high school history teacher and football coach, and daughter-in-law, a nurse ICU on the floor COVID. “My health plan considers me to be a non-smoker. And the rest does not fit at all. “
It wasn’t until she spoke to a reporter and tapped her weight and height on a BMI calculator that she realized she had a BMI of 25.6, over the limit.
“If an individual does not define himself that way, or is not diagnosed or feels uncomfortable presenting himself, he is not likely to place himself in that group,” said Kates.
Being a few decimal points out of the required BMI or having an unlisted medical condition is not something that people should be concerned about, said Hassig.
“I would tell them to check a box and get vaccinated,” said Hassig.