Adults under 65 with underlying disabilities and health conditions will soon be eligible to receive coronavirus vaccines, but disability advocates fear that efforts to require people to prove their eligibility may prevent or discourage some from being injected. with the potentially life-saving vaccine.
As of March 15, two groups of younger, high-risk Californians – people with disabilities and people with serious underlying illnesses – could be vaccinated against the coronavirus, state health officials announced on Friday.
But they have yet to say how high-risk Californians will be asked to prove they qualify, or how officials plan to prevent people who do not meet those qualifications from making appointments or cutting the queue. California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said the state will spend the next month determining what kind of verification will be needed.
For an elderly person to prove that they are eligible for vaccination due to age, a driver’s license or other identity document will suffice. For a person with a disability or illness to prove that he or she qualifies for vaccination, medical officials say, no universal document is available.
Some advocates for the rights of people with disabilities minimize the likelihood of fraud, but say that making the process of proving deficiencies or underlying health conditions can be very costly and end up preventing or discouraging some people from getting vaccines.
“As a person with a disability, I want to make sure that we don’t have to have evidence of our disability that requires people to overcome many obstacles,” said Christina Mills, executive director of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers and a member of a committee that advises the state on the implementation of vaccination.
The underlying conditions that will result in vaccine eligibility in March include cancer, chronic kidney disease at stage four or higher, chronic lung disease, Down syndrome, weakened immune system by a solid organ transplant, sickle cell disease, pregnancy, serious obesity heart problems – defined as a body mass index of 40 years or more – and type 2 diabetes. The state did not specify which deficiencies would qualify people to be included in this next group.
Andy Imparato, executive director of Disability Rights California, also a member of the advisory committee, said that many people with severe disabilities have cards or documents that enroll them in programs or centers or show that they receive home care. But people with some disabilities and underlying qualification conditions do not necessarily carry cards that would prove their eligibility.
A woman in early pregnancy, for example, may have nothing more than the results of a home pregnancy test to prove her right to an injection under the expanded eligibility rules.
Requiring qualified people to visit or call their doctors to get some sort of check can be difficult because many medical providers are already overwhelmed, he said. Mills said advocates for the rights of people with disabilities opposed proposals that required vaccine seekers to provide three proofs of disability or underlying conditions.
“My hope is that concerns about fraud will not create barriers for people to get the vaccine,” said Imparato.
Both Imparato and Mills said they did not expect many people pretending to be disabled to receive vaccines, but acknowledge that it is a concern of state officials.
Bypassing the rules is not unknown in relation to health-related exemptions. Police officers have long complained about abuses of the use of blue parking permits for disabled people by people without disabilities, and airlines have been concerned about the proliferation of emotionally supportive companions – to the point that some are taking steps to ban them in flights.
Steve Rubenstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, contributed to this report.
Michael Cabanatuan is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]