Maine plans to start vaccinating people 65 to 69 for COVID-19 in early March

Maine hopes to start vaccinating those 65 to 69 in the first week of March, having then immunized two-thirds of the population aged 70 and over, Governor Janet Mills and other officials said on Thursday.

There will be some overlap, and for at least a few weeks, both groups will receive vaccines, just as the 70-year-old or older group started receiving vaccines on January 18, while the state was still immunizing first-rate health workers and nursing homes.

“When we get to the first week of March, we hope to start vaccinating this population aged 65 and over,” said Jeanne Lambrew, Maine health and human services commissioner, during a news conference on Thursday.

Maine reported 301 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, and three additional deaths. Currently, 145 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 in Maine, with 46 in intensive care.

Pressed by reporters about when teachers would be vaccinated, Mills said that no decision has been made about when teachers will start receiving their vaccines. The governor said that “teachers are highly valued”, but gave no details on where teachers would position themselves among essential frontline workers. There is national pressure to prioritize teachers for vaccination in order to keep them safe and give schools a chance to open earlier.

“We hope that all children have a chance to get back to school as soon as possible,” said Mills.

Most school districts are operating under a hybrid model, where students attend school in person during part of the week and learn remotely the other part of the week.

Teachers are part of the essential workers in Phase 1B and, although essential workers may include postal workers, grocery clerks, teachers and others, the state has not yet said which groups would be on the front lines in Phase 1B, or when Phase 1B would start for essential workers. Phase 1B also includes elderly people aged 65 and over, but so far the only group in Phase 1B that the state has started to immunize are those aged 70 and over, which includes about 193,000 people.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 40,534 positive cases of COVID-19 and 630 deaths.

Case counts continue their lowest trajectory compared to mid-January, as the state’s vaccination program is implemented. The seven-day average of new daily cases stood at 297.1 on Thursday, compared with 402.3 in the previous week and 521.3 in the previous month. The seven-day averages are now similar to those in early December.

Maine administered 167,111 doses of the vaccine, including 123,683 first doses and 43,428 second doses. As of Thursday, 9.2 percent of Maine’s 1.3 million population had received at least the first dose. Maine is the tenth best state for measuring how quickly doses are administered, according to the Bloomberg News vaccine tracker. Alaska is at the top of the country with 17.76 doses administered by 100 people as of Wednesday, while Maine was at 12.03 doses per 100 people. The national average was 10.7 doses per 100.

However, the federal government’s supply of vaccines remains a concern.

Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Thursday that supply is currently the biggest obstacle to the state’s ability to immunize enough residents to achieve collective immunity.

Herd immunity would be achieved when about 80% of the state’s 1.3 million people, or just over 1 million people, are fully vaccinated, enough to prevent the virus from circulating in the population. The Biden administration has increased shipments to the states, but Maine is still receiving only about 21,000 doses a week.

Maine placed its order for the next week, which includes 21,475 doses, an increase of 5 percent – 1,100 doses – over the previous week. Of these, 12,700 will be Modern doses and 8,775 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

For the fourth consecutive week, Maine has not allocated any new doses to the retail pharmacy program operated by Walgreens and CVS, which help vaccinate long-term care facilities. Instead, 2,500 doses will be sent to independent pharmacies to run vaccination clinics at long-term care facilities. Walgreens and CVS are still immunizing long-term care facilities with doses that were previously allocated.

Shah said he was concerned about the slow progress of the retail pharmacy program, especially at Walgreens. Walgreens completed 100 of the 160 long-term care institutions on its list by Tuesday, according to data from the company’s website. Shah said on Thursday that details will be released, but he expects a further expansion of the role of independent pharmacies to be announced soon.

The Scarborough Downs mass vaccination site opened on Wednesday, with 115 appointments scheduled. The site, overseen by MaineHealth, will be open for the foreseeable future, every day except Sunday, and will increase to vaccinate about 1,500 to 2,000 per day, depending on supply.

Northern Light Health opened its mass vaccination site at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, and former Marshall’s in Sanford is being considered for a mass immunization clinic that would open later this month. Shah said he expects mass vaccination clinics to open in the Portland, Lewiston-Auburn and Augusta areas as vaccine supplies increase.

Without a statewide registration system, health and hospital networks have developed their own ways of scheduling vaccination appointments for eligible individuals. The result is a hodgepodge of systems, many of which have been overwhelmed by the large number of people trying to secure a limited number of vaccines each week.

Approximately 65,000 people qualified for the vaccine have previously registered with MaineHealth and are waiting for calls to schedule an appointment when it’s their turn. With people getting anxious after weeks of waiting for those calls, MaineHealth started making automated “courtesy calls” on Wednesday to everyone who signed up to ensure they are still on the system and will be contacted when an appointment is available. for them.

Spokesman John Porter said on Thursday that automated courtesy calls are likely to be made periodically.

The team’s editor, Kevin Miller, contributed to this report.

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