Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration cut the flow of COVID-19 vaccines to West Side Loretto Hospital on Thursday, hours after hospital administrators admitted for the second time this week that they made “mistakes” in allowing that people who were not yet eligible would receive access to vaccines.
Loretto admitted on Thursday that he made a mistake – his second admission in a week – after WBEZ reported that 13 Cook County Court judges had the opportunity to obtain coronavirus vaccines at the Austin neighborhood hospital on March 8.
It followed Loretto’s mea culpa after The Block Club Chicago revealed for the first time that health care The provider wrongly gave COVID-19 vaccines to Trump Tower employees in downtown Chicago, away from the hospital that primarily serves low-income, black patients on the West Side.
The hospital promised to avoid a repeat of these scenarios, but it was apparently too late to avoid the city’s dramatic response to Loretto’s alleged favoritism in vaccinations.
In a statement, Lightfoot cited recent “stories” about healthcare providers that “allowed well-connected individuals to skip the line to receive the vaccine, instead of using it to serve the neediest.”
“Our city will not tolerate providers who openly violate the Chicago Department of Public Health distribution guidelines for the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Lightfoot, threatening similar action against other providers who are caught not following the rules.
And government officials said Loretto can give the second and last dose of the vaccine to those who received their first injection – but the hospital will not receive a first dose from the city next week and “until we can confirm that its vaccination strategies and vaccination practices are in place. report meet all [city health department] requirements. “
As with Trump Tower vaccinations, Loretto initially advocated giving the judges a chance to vaccinate – as well as their spouses or another “second person” of each judge’s choice, according to an email obtained by WBEZ.
On Thursday, however, Loretto President and CEO George Miller issued a statement erroneously stating that judges were allowed to take vaccines under a phase 1b section of the City of Chicago’s “vaccination plan”, which allows vaccines to be sent to the city now elected officials.
In fact, officials from the city’s Department of Public Health confirmed that phase 1b in progress does not include judges. Being a judge alone will not make someone eligible for COVID-19 photos until the next phase, which begins on March 29.
In a statement on Thursday, the hospital said it had misinterpreted the city’s guidelines and promised that it would do its best not to repeat its mistakes at the Trump Tower and in the judicial vaccinations.
The city’s current vaccination group, 1b, includes people aged 65 and over and “essential frontline workers”, such as teachers, firefighters and public transport agency workers.
“I can only apologize for the distortion yesterday, as it was indicative of a level of confusion existing between the medical teams in Loretto and other facilities regarding the nuances and differences between city and state eligibility requirements 1b and 1b +”, a hospital spokesman told WBEZ on Thursday. “This is no excuse for mistakes made.”
The spokeswoman, Bonni Pear, also said that the chief executive and other hospital leaders are working with Democratic state deputy LaShawn Ford – whose district includes Loretto and who is on the hospital’s board of trustees – to “step up measures of control to ensure strict compliance with “the city’s vaccination plan and” avoid repeating the mistakes of the past “.
Ford criticized Loretto for vaccination offers for both Trump Tower workers and judges. But on Thursday, he said that the Lightfoot move meant “cutting off our nose to offend our face”.
“The city should investigate the actions of Hospital Loretto, but the community should not be isolated during the pandemic,” Ford told WBEZ. “The need is great and the Loretto Hospital works are progressing. There may be clear directions from the city, but the city must not lose momentum. “
That sentiment was echoed on Thursday night by the powerful union SEIU Healthcare Illinois, which represents some workers in Loretto.
“We are strongly opposed to the decision by the Chicago Department of Public Health to withhold vaccine doses from a safety net serving high-risk and underserved communities, mostly black and brown,” said union president Greg Kelley , in a statement.
Kelley pointed out that Loretto is involved in the city’s Protect Chicago Plus program, which aims to vaccinate the city’s black and Latino residents who have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
“Loretto workers have already sacrificed enough in their frontline duties at a safety hospital in the Austin community during a pandemic. It is crucial that the Board limit its corrective actions to the two individuals responsible for this lack of judgment – and do not punish the workers and the community they serve. “
In December, Lightfoot held an event in Loretto, where healthcare professionals were the first people in Chicago to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Loretto is a small hospital with a safety net on the West Side of Chicago. Most of Loretto’s patients are black and low-income, and the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected blacks and Latinos in Chicago and elsewhere.
The mayor’s drastic response to Loretto’s favoritism in vaccine distribution came at a time when many people who are already eligible to be vaccinated are struggling to secure vaccine appointments due to huge demand and limited supply of doses.
This all happens, as the state said this week that it plans to open vaccination for all people aged 16 and over in less than a month, eliminating layers of eligible groups. But Chicago stuck to its rules of first vaccinating those most at risk – including the elderly, frontline workers and people in communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19 – before opening consultations widely.
In the March 8 email from WBEZ, Diann Marsalek – the interim presiding judge of the county’s judicial system transit division – invited 13 other judges to arrange Loretto appointments for them, their spouses or anyone else they wanted to bring for photos of the Pfizer vaccine.
The 13 judges who received Marsalek’s email invitation were: William Sullivan, Susanne Groebner, Celia Gamrath, Michael Hogan, Athanasios Sianis, Krista Butler, Cara Smith, Daniel Tiernan, Lindsay Huge, Lynn Weaver Boyle, Patricia Sheahan, Clare Quish and Joe Panarese.
It is not clear whether any of them received the injections through this offer or brought others with them for vaccines in Loretto. WBEZ sent messages to all 13 judges and none of them wanted to comment. Loretto’s CEO Miller said that federal health privacy law prevented him from discussing specific cases.
Another judge told WBEZ that he was vaccinated in Loretto last month, although he is only 61 and was originally informed by the hospital that he was not eligible to receive his vaccinations there.
Since the pandemic began a year ago, judges have been working mainly online. The judges presided almost 1.5 million hours of lawsuits over Zoom last year, officials said.
A spokeswoman for Timothy Evans, the chief judge of the circuit court system, defended the vaccination of judges and their spouses, saying that the doses that had been given to them would have been otherwise wasted. The hospital never made such a statement.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on the WBEZ Government and Policy Team. Cook County reporter Kristen Schorsch contributed information to this story.