Older mainers are waiting for a word about the vaccine: how will they know we’re here?

While Barry Hoffman, 84, watches the public launch of the coronavirus vaccine, all he wants is an acknowledgment of its existence.

Hoffman of Cape Elizabeth moved to Maine about a decade ago, leaving his long-term primary care physician in Boston. He only sees a cardiologist in Maine. And after nine months of social detachment, staying at home and playing it safe, he fears that, at the time of vaccination, he will be forgotten.

“My big question is, who knows about me? What do I do now? Just sit and wait? “Hoffman said last week.” I would like to know that I exist and then receive some notification that I’m here and waiting. I don’t mind waiting, but I just want to make sure I don’t fall into the cracks. “

At the moment, Maine is still following federal guidelines that place Hoffman at level 1B of the state’s vaccination plan. This plan includes people aged 75 and over as a second group receiving doses of the vaccine, behind medical frontline workers and people living in congregated care settings such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Also in group 1B are essential workers, including police, fire, grocery workers and others.

While the state is considering suspending that order and moving the elderly ahead of essential workers, as some other states have decided to do, Hoffman is forced to wait and ask himself when and how he will receive the vaccine.

“I’m telling my patients to be patient,” said Dr. James W. Jarvis, a family doctor at Eastern Light Medical Center at Northern Light Health in Bangor, who is directing the state health network’s COVID response, a team of several hundred people, he said.

“A lot of people want to know where they are on the list, but unfortunately there is no list, because the schedules are still up,” said Jarvis. “We know that there will be very good announcements about who or when they will receive the vaccine.”

Jarvis suggested that the state could use a system based on birthdays or surnames to find out how to vaccinate the population. But, again, these decisions have not yet been made.

And with vaccine shipments and implementation slower than anticipated, Hoffman and many of his colleagues are becoming impatient, and with good reason. Estimates of when 1B vaccinations will begin are vague and the end of January to February has emerged as a likely deadline. But for anyone over 70 in Maine, the waiting calculation is obvious and daunting.

Of the 347 COVID-related deaths through Thursday, 296 were people aged 70 and over, or 85 percent of deaths here. When you include people aged 60 and over, the figure is an impressive 96%. One caveat about these numbers is that many of them, about half of those who died, lived in congregational care institutions.

Maine remains the oldest state in the country. Of the approximately 1.3 million residents, 107,000 are 75 years of age or older. When you count people aged 65 and over, that number reaches 260,000 people, or almost 20% of the population, according to recent United States Census estimates.

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that the first vaccines be for the elderly in the congregated care and frontline medical workers, so that the state health system still has the capacity to treat COVID patients along with all others. people who get sick or hurt due to other causes.

Maine public health officials say they are doing everything they can to organize the deployment as quickly as possible to reach Maine’s people living at home. So far, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention has strictly followed federal guidelines that put people 75 and older on the same foot as police and grocery workers, and ahead of their peers aged 65 to 75 – but even even that decree is not set in stone.

Other states, including Florida and Texas, have come to prioritize people aged 60 and over, and in many Florida counties, elderly people in wheelchairs, supported on walkers and covered in blankets waited hours outside in the vaccine lines, trying to protect your first dose.

Details on implantation for older seniors are still being worked out, but the Maine CDC said recently that the state is likely to depend on primary care physicians or other medical professionals to notify its older patients when they are eligible for vaccination. These details will be announced in the coming weeks by the state news media.

The wait for clear guidance has done nothing to calm the nerves of people like Jacqueline Lessard, who is 74 years old and three months old, which means she will have to wait even longer to receive the vaccine if current standards are maintained. Lessard usually spends winters in Florida – if she were there now, she could be one of thousands of veterans in line.

But from late October, Lessard decided to stay in Maine and moved in with her 99-year-old mother in Augusta full-time to help her through the winter. Her mother’s doctor said that at 99, COVID is almost certainly a death sentence. Which puts even more pressure on Lessard to minimize the risk of becoming ill and ensure that she and her mother get the vaccine as soon as possible.

“I know it is very difficult to go through this (decision process) who will have it and who will not,” said Lessard. “I understand perfectly (that) the first respondents and doctors need to be the first in line. I used to work on a rescue, I understand. When I hear that … the cashiers are going to pay before the elderly, I get emotionally drained. “

Lessard has been trying to get answers for days about what the plan will be, she said, and is trying at every opportunity to put pressure on public officials, no matter how little the effort. She first called a local aging agency, then the Maine CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services. She tried to find the phone number of Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of Maine’s CDC, to vent her frustration.

When a reporter told her that it is the federal CDC that decides how many doses are distributed to each state, Lessard did not miss a beat. “Do you have a number for them?”

Armand Bouchard, 81 and his wife, Anne, 80, said they want better communication from health officials about what they know and what they don’t know about who will be vaccinated and when.

“Is anyone going to call me one day and say, ‘Hey, your name just came up, be at this place at 10 am tomorrow morning’?” Armand Bouchard said. “Maybe they are not at this point, but if they are not, they should say that. At least we would know. And if they know that I will not receive anything until March, then I will write in my calendar in March with a question mark. “

The Harpswell Bouchards said they had received a warning from their healthcare provider, Martin’s Point Health Care, that they would be notified when the vaccine was available. But it is only a small consolation, he said, because “I don’t know how much information they really have”.

Geriatric experts and family doctors say they are hearing these same questions over and over, but they still have few good answers.

In general, older people have a generally positive view of health care and vaccines. They are used to taking medications and vaccines, including those given mainly to older adults for conditions like pneumococcal pneumonia, herpes zoster and the annual flu strain. They are also less likely to spend time on Facebook than people in their 50s and 60s, many of whom consume unfounded conspiracy theories on the Internet that have undermined confidence in vaccines, said Dr. Cliff Singer, head of Geriatric Mental Health and Neuropsychiatry at Northern Light Health and president of the Dirigo Maine Geriatrics Society, a group of 78 geriatric and gerontologists.

“They grew up when polio was a concern,” said Singer. “They grew up and saw childhood illnesses decrease due to healthy vaccination rates.”

Singer said he understands the argument for vaccinating the elderly first, but agrees with the state’s prioritization plan.

“Obviously, this is an area rich in ethical debates,” said Singer. “But you need essential workers to care for older adults. I think Maine CDC has the right prioritization. “

He added that older adults will be vaccinated in the near future, but they are not at as high a risk as people who are in “congregational care settings, or the people who care for them in those settings”.

“Previous