Oregon’s chief health officer said on Wednesday that the state would comply with a federal order and make all residents 16 and older eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on May 1.
Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, made that commitment on Wednesday during an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.
Allen’s comments came six days after President Biden’s announcement that all states would have enough vaccine stock to make all residents eligible by May 1, two months ahead of schedule.
Oregon, last week, was reluctant to commit to that schedule, with Governor Kate Brown and Allen on Friday saying they wanted the doses to arrive before committing to it.
Less than a week later, Allen now said the state is still unclear as to whether it will receive enough vaccines in the coming weeks to meet Biden’s accelerated schedule, which is powered by the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine available nationwide.
Allen told Dave Miller of OPB that the state received a request from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services directing vaccination sites to meet the new schedule.
“We will be complying with that order and making all Oregon residents eligible on May 1,” said Allen.
Allen said Oregon is “a little nervous” about committing to the new eligibility schedule because it is unsure that it will receive the proportional vaccine doses needed to open the floodgates for hundreds of thousands of additional Oregonians by May 1. a promise to vaccinate the elderly in January, but had to step back when the Trump administration’s early doses never arrived.
Oregon is still vaccinating senior citizens and will not get the next group of residents – those 45 and older with pre-existing illnesses and some frontline workers in the agriculture and food processing industry – to qualify until March 29.
The authorities planned to expand eligibility on May 1 for people with underlying illnesses between the ages of 16 and 44, as well as a long list of frontline workers, including supermarket employees, restaurant and bar employees, store employees. retailers, bus drivers, construction workers and government officials. According to the original schedule, everyone else would qualify on July 1st.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services issued a two-page directive on Wednesday, outlining the requirement to make Americans aged 16 and over eligible on May 1.
Norris Cochran, the acting secretary of the federal agency, wrote that limiting vaccine administration to high-risk, priority groups made sense in the first few months after doses became available in December.
“However, given substantial increases in the supply of vaccines,” wrote Cochran, “it is appropriate to transition beyond priority groups.”
What exactly this substantial increase in vaccine supply means for Oregon remains unclear.
States generally have a three-week window on the federal vaccine distribution website, where they can look into the future and see the number of doses to come. Allen said the necessary doses still do not appear in that three-week window, which makes him nervous.
“To be fair,” he told OPB, “this administration has generally been very good at delivering on what has ensured that we would be able to see in terms of doses.”
Oregon is still weeks away from what Allen said was a good problem – where the insatiable demand for vaccines gives way to excess doses available across the state at offices of providers, pharmacies and mass clinics in populated areas. So far, about one in five Oregon residents has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
In the meantime, the state health authority predicts that vaccine hesitation will continue to be a problem in some parts of the state, with Allen saying that there is “a real patchwork across Oregon” when it comes to people who want to be immunized. .
Erica Heartquist, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Health Authority, said the Biden administration informed governors “earlier this week” about its expanded eligibility campaign, calling it “good news” that vaccine production will meet national demand for make all adults eligible by May 1.
Heartquist said officials would honor their pledge to ensure equitable access to vaccines in the new schedule, finding ways to prioritize groups at risk – even if it means doing so after everyone is eligible.
“We will continue to centralize equity in all of our vaccine distribution efforts, whether that means ensuring that senior citizens, people with underlying illnesses, frontline employees and Oregon residents most vulnerable to COVID-19 have the opportunity to vaccinate before May 1 – or after May 1, working with local health partners to ensure that these priority groups continue to have access to consultations, ”she said in a statement.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that Oregon is committing itself to making all residents aged 16 and over, not 18 years old, eligible. President Biden previously stated that everyone aged 18 or over would be eligible
– Andrew Theen; [email protected]; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen