On February 16, AARP SC State Director Teresa Arnold made the following statement to the House of South Carolina Subcommittee on Health Care, while considering the testimony related to S. 516.
“I want to thank the Legislative of SC, the Committee of Paths and Means of the Chamber and, in particular, this subcommittee for their incredible efforts to protect the South Carolinians and focus on what will bring us back to prosperity. Our 600,000 members in South Carolina are waiting for you as a leader to guide us out of this pandemic.
I and the members I represent are grateful to Governor McMaster for following the evidence and working so hard to protect people aged 65 and over in our state by prioritizing them for the vaccine.
I would like to make three points:
- Show evidence of who is most at risk
- Reduce health disparities and COVID risk
- Show how AARP wants to be part of the solution
One: 81 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in this state are people aged 65 and over. Add the rest of the members, 50 and over, and nationally the percentage of deaths due to COVID rises to 95 percent.
Two: The SC Aging Research Network, composed of researchers from USC, Clemson and MUSC, has just released a Health Disparities report on the 50+ in SC for AARP. (This report was published online on February 17 in Moultrie News.)
The state’s death rate for Southern Carolinians aged 50 and over due to COVID-19 is 11.2 per 100,000 for Whites, but 26 per 100,000 for Southern Black Carolinians. In other words, our African American brothers die more than double the whites. And those larger numbers are more evident on the younger end of the 65-plus +.
Quoting our January 2021 Health Disparities Report, “As blacks have higher rates of COVID-19 than whites, coordinated public health and health efforts should focus on ensuring that they get vaccines as quickly as possible. possible.”
Three: SC AARP is partnering with Tricia Richardson with SC Thrive and Lathran Woodard with the South Carolina Primary Health Care Association to find elderly people in rural areas who do not have access to the Internet and sign them up for a vaccine. AARP has identified some 38,000 AARP member families in our state who are unlikely to have access to the internet, are 65 years of age or older and have a lower income.
I hope you make sure that those most vulnerable to COVID disease and death remain the focus of the vaccine application.
Canceling current appointments for the first vaccines for people over 65 is a bit like Russian Roulette. Will the 69-year-old cancer survivor safely arrive at a highly disputed appointment if it is canceled or rescheduled before contracting any variant of COVID? “