Some Delaware residents received the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine at a mass vaccination event over the weekend – although they are not yet eligible to receive the vaccine, according to state health officials.
On Saturday, at the mass vaccination event attended by state governor John Carney, some Delawareans who attended the drive-thru event at the Motor Vehicle Division in Dover received the vaccine despite not being health professionals or residents or employees of a long-term institution, groups that are part of phase 1A of distribution and the only ones eligible to receive the vaccine at the moment.
Those who participate in phase 1B – those who are 65 or older and frontline workers – are likely to receive the jab in the state by the end of the month, according to the Associated Press.
It is unclear how many of those ineligible received the vaccine over the weekend, but reports of such events led to a response from Delaware Mayor Pete Schwartzkopf.
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“We are still in Group 1a and vaccines today should be given to healthcare professionals and first responders,” said Schwartzkopf in a Facebook post on Saturday.
“Some people passed and should have been challenged, but it was not mainly because the team that makes the vaccination is made up of volunteers and they did not have access to a database to check if they were the first to respond,” added Schwartzkopf. “Others came and were vaccinated because friends … called them or posted online and said to come and get vaccinated because they had taken theirs.”
“Towards the end of the day, the first responders slowed down and a decision was made to try to get some people aged 65 and over to pass,” said Schwartzkopf in the post.
“The organizers wanted to use all the vaccine they had, so they plunged into group 1b and made Modern Maturity bring in about 100 seniors,” he wrote, referring to a community center for seniors in Dover.
Reports of people currently ineligible to receive the vaccine at the weekend event also led to a response from the Delaware Public Health Division, which said “the protocols will be stricter” for the event that continues through Monday.
“Our colleagues in the Public Health Division explain what happened at today’s vaccination event in Dover. Protocols will be enforced for Sunday and Monday events, and only those eligible for Phase 1A will be vaccinated,” said health officials. health in a statement posted on Facebook. “We thank everyone who follows these protocols to help ensure that our healthcare professionals and EMS staff are vaccinated so that we can transition to Phase 1B soon.”
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The news comes when the country surpasses the 11 million mark in terms of COVID-19 injections administered at the end of last week – still less than half the doses delivered, however, and days after the Trump administration urged states to open up the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine to broader groups, including those 65 and older, in an effort to accelerate those efforts.
Of the more than 91,000 vaccines distributed in the state to date, about 31,090 have been administered, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The Associated Press contributed to this report.