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Florida and Texas residents aged 65 and over can now receive coronavirus vaccines.
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The decision goes against the CDC’s recommendations that say essential workers and people over 75 should be next.
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“The problem is that 73-74-year-olds would be behind the line for a 21-year-old young man considered ‘essential’,” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
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Florida and Texas have begun distributing coronavirus vaccines to residents over 65.
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order distributing vaccines to residents and nursing home staff, people aged 65 and over, medical workers and anyone deemed “extremely vulnerable to COVID-19”. Texas did the same a few days earlier, giving the green light to people aged 65 and over, along with those who have certain pre-existing illnesses, to start vaccinating.
“Focusing on people aged 65 or over or who have comorbidities will protect the most vulnerable populations,” said Imelda Garcia, chairman of Texas’s vaccine allocation expert panel, in a statement.
These decisions go against the guidelines established by an advisory group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommended that health workers and nursing home residents and staff should be first in line, followed by essential frontline workers and people over 75. These recommendations, the group wrote, are aimed at “preserving the functioning of society” and “reducing mortality and serious illness as much as possible.”
But in Florida and Texas, essential workers were expelled from the next round of vaccination.
“The problem is that 73, 74 year olds would be behind the line for a 21 year old young man considered ‘essential’. I don’t think that makes sense, ” DeSantis told a news conference on Wednesday.
None of the states finished vaccinating everyone in the first priority group.
Literal vaccine lines formed
The few places in Florida and Texas that have started administering vaccines to people over 65 have run out quickly.
The Lee County Health Department, which includes Fort Myers, began vaccinating people 65 and older on Monday. The county team said they expected to have 300 doses available at one location on Monday, three locations on Tuesday and three locations on Wednesday.
Photos from the local news agency The News-Press showed residents of Fort Myers lining up at Estero Park and Rec Center on Sunday night, 19 hours before the clinic opened.
The next morning, the line extended around the building. The clinic ran out of doses at noon.
Likewise, the Wise Health System in Decatur, Texas, began administering injections to residents over the age of 65 on a first come, first served basis on Wednesday. People lined up more than two hours before the clinic opened, and the doses ran out at 8:30 am
“We know that the clinic over 65 did not do as well as we would like,” wrote the Wise Health System on its Facebook page on Wednesday. “The decision was made to provide the vaccine to this age-critical group on Tuesday morning and was implemented in less than 24 hours.”
Each state decides how to distribute its vaccine supply
CDC guidelines for the distribution of vaccines Moderna and Pfizer say that after healthcare professionals and residents and nursing home staff (priority group 1a), the next doses should go to people over 75 and essential workers – such as teachers , agricultural workers, grocery workers and public transport workers (group 1b). Next should be Americans aged 65 to 74, along with people under 64 who have high-risk medical conditions and any other essential workers.
In total, the United States has 24 million health workers and residents and employees of nursing homes. As of Saturday, 9.5 million doses of the vaccine had been distributed. Florida, in particular, is expected to receive 970,000 doses by the end of the year, but the state has 1.1 million health workers and 270,000 nursing home residents, according to the Washington Post. Texas has about 1.4 million health workers and 300,000 people in nursing homes, but Governor Greg Abbott said the state will receive 1.2 million doses this month.
“There is no need to ensure that your entire group 1a has been vaccinated before starting vaccination 1b,” wrote John Hellerstedt, Texas State Department of Health Services commissioner, in a letter to health facilities on Wednesday .
The CDC’s instructions are only guidelines – it is up to the states to prioritize their shots. A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 45 states are following the CDC’s recommendations. Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wyoming have deviated slightly by including law enforcement officials in their first round of vaccinations. Massachusetts is also including incarcerated people and those in homeless shelters in its first group.
Meanwhile, Texas has decided that residents’ occupations will not be the deciding factor, at least not yet.
“Texas clearly fell on the side of ‘let’s focus on those who are most at risk for illness and death,'” Jen Kates, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told CNBC.
‘Our priority is the elderly’
In Florida, approximately 4.4 million residents are over 65 and over 3 million are over 70. Between May and August, 78% of coronavirus deaths in the United States were from people aged 65 and over.
“Our priority is the elderly population,” said DeSantis during a news conference on Wednesday.
Brett Giroir, assistant health secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the decision makes sense.
“Because these are the people who go to hospitals. It’s not the 24-year-old frontline worker who has a low risk of getting the infection and a very, very low risk of getting serious results from it,” Giroir told Fox News. Sunday, adding, “As hospitals get full, the first priority really needs to be saving lives and reducing the burden on hospitals.”
Essential workers, however, face an increased risk of exposure to coronavirus, and a disproportionate share is poor and not white.
“Black and Hispanic workers in Florida are dying disproportionately from COVID,” said Dr. Terry Adirim, a pediatric emergency physician at Florida Atlantic University, to the Palm-Beach Post, adding: “These are the people who work in the supermarkets, delivering the supermarket, driving the bus, putting their lives at risk so that those of us who can work from home can work from home. “
COVID-19 also killed many young people. One study found that from April to June, more than 3,300 Americans aged 18 to 34 were hospitalized with COVID-19 and 21% required intensive care. About 3% died.
Between July and August, people between 20 and 29 years old accounted for the highest proportion of coronavirus cases in the USA – more than 20%.
Aria Bendix and Hilary Brueck contributed to the report.
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