If people who live or work in New Jersey are still afraid of getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Governor Phil Murphy reminded them on Thursday that it won’t cost anything, even if they don’t have insurance.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention negotiated an agreement with vaccine providers that they would have to accept any covered insurance as payment, said Murphy. And people without insurance would not be charged, said the governor.
“As we continue to launch our robust vaccination program across the state, we want to make it clear to New Jersey residents that no one will have to pay for the vaccine itself, regardless of whether or not they have health insurance coverage,” said Murphy in a statement Thursday.
“We encourage everyone to join hundreds of thousands of their New Jersey counterparts in pre-registration to receive the vaccine and take another step to end this pandemic.”
Banking and Insurance Commissioner Marlene Caride said her office issued “guidelines reminding insurers of this requirement, as the state works to protect the health and safety of our residents in response to the global pandemic.”
Priority groups in the first phase designated to receive the vaccine include medical professionals, nursing home staff and residents, prison officers and prisoners and first responders, such as police and emergency management technicians. Since December 15, almost 138,000 injections have been administered.
About 450,000 people signed up on the first day of a new state website that pre-registers members of the public for vaccines when their priority group is called, Murphy said.
The Murphy government set a goal to vaccinate 4.7 million or 70% of the state’s population in six months. But some people, including hospital workers, expressed fears at the beginning of the vaccine may not be safe due to the speed with which it was approved. State and federal public health professionals emphasized that no corners were cut during testing and vaccines received the same level of scrutiny and testing as any previous vaccine.
There is evidence that public opposition is beginning to wane, Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said on Monday. A survey conducted in late December found that 53% of New Jersey residents “definitely” would get the vaccine, compared with 44% in mid-December and again.
Ed Lifshitz, director of the state’s Communicable Diseases Service, said the chance of someone being harmed by the vaccine is far outweighed by the threat of the coronavirus.
“Let me put it relatively simply,” said Lifshitz, a doctor, during the coronavirus briefing with the governor on Monday. “In New Jersey, we had about half a million COVID cases with almost 20,000 deaths. In the United States, we gave almost 10 times that number of doses or more than 4 million doses with zero deaths from the vaccine. I would certainly have my chances with the virus vaccine any day of the week. “
The pre-registration website is located at covid19.nj.gov/vaccine.
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Susan K. Livio can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on twitter @SusanKLivio.