The latest: online registration complicates the launch of vaccines for the elderly

DENVER – Howard Jones, 83, stays on the phone for three to four hours every day trying to sign up for a coronavirus vaccine.

Jones, who lives alone in Colorado Springs, has no internet, which made it much more difficult for him to make an appointment. It took about a week. He said the confusion increased his anxiety about catching what could be a fatal illness at his age.

“It’s been hell,” said Jones. “I am 83 years old and not using a computer is just terrible.”

As states in the United States implement the COVID-19 vaccine for people 65 and older, older people are struggling to figure out how to apply for vaccines. Many states and counties are asking people to book appointments online, but problematic sites, crowded phone lines and a patchwork of rapidly changing rules are plaguing older people, who often have less technology knowledge, may live far from vaccination sites and are more likely to not have access to the Internet at all, especially people of color and the poor.

Nearly 9.5 million seniors, or 16.5% of adults 65 and older, do not have access to the internet, according to data from the US Census Bureau. Access is worse for elderly colored people: more than 25% of blacks, about 21% of Hispanics and more than 28% of Native Americans aged 65 and over have no way to connect. This is compared with 15.5% of white elderly people.

Some health officials have been trying to find other solutions to alleviate the confusion and help seniors sign up, just as the Trump administration urged states this week to make the country’s 54 million seniors eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Some places have found simple ideas that work. In Morgantown, West Virginia, county health officials used a large road construction sign to list the phone number for the elderly to call for an appointment. Others are considering partnering with community groups or setting up mobile clinics for populations that are harder to reach.

Some elderly people may be waiting for a response from the doctor. But there are limits to the use of health systems, pharmacies or primary care providers to reach underprivileged people who have no internet, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

In New Jersey, smokers can now get the vaccine before teachers or public transportation officials

As New Jersey expands its coronavirus vaccine distribution this week, state officials announced that anyone 65 and older can now get the vaccines, as well as those aged 16-64 with certain medical conditions.

A group covered by these medical conditions, however, generated a negative reaction – that is, the state’s nearly two million smokers, who can now get the vaccine before teachers or public transport officials.

State officials say smokers should be a priority for the nearly 732,000 doses New Jersey has received so far because, like those suffering from other underlying medical conditions, they are at risk for more serious symptoms of COVID-19.

“Smoking puts you at significant risk and adverse outcome from COVID-19,” State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli told a news conference on Wednesday.

But some public health experts said they struggled to make sense of that decision.

“This would not be a high priority group,” Eric Topol, a cardiologist, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The Washington Post. “Smoking alone does not solve it, in my opinion”, arguing that only smokers who also suffer from chronic respiratory disease should receive early vaccinations.

The conflict highlights the difficult decisions that state officials must make when deciding how to deliver millions of doses of the vaccine and who should receive the first doses, a process that has been delayed and hampered by uneven federal coordination, experts say.

Germany exceeds the 2 million mark for COVID cases

BERLIN – Germany has exceeded the 2 million mark confirmed by COVID infections since the beginning of the pandemic.

The country’s disease control agency said on Friday that there were 22,368 new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 2,000,958.

The Robert Koch Institute said there were 44,994 deaths related to the coronavirus, an increase of 1,113 in one day.

The German news agency dpa reported that newspapers published significantly more death notifications during the period up to October 2020 than in the previous year.

The daily Saechsische Zeitung, which covers the eastern state of Saxony, now severely affected by the outbreak, had three pages instead of the usual two pages of obituary.

In the coronavirus vaccination campaign, Deep South is left behind

ATLANTA – Coronavirus vaccines were distributed unevenly in the United States, but four states in the Far South had particularly dismal inoculation rates that alarmed health experts and frustrated residents.

In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, less than 2% of the population received their first dose of a vaccine earlier in the week, according to data from the states and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As in other parts of the country, the southern states face a number of challenges: limited supplies of vaccines, health professionals who refuse to be vaccinated and bureaucratic systems that are not equipped to schedule the large number of requested appointments.

But other states still managed – in the best possible way – to put vaccines in the arms of more than 5% of their populations.

While it is unclear why Deep South is lagging behind, public health researchers note that it has typically lagged in public health financing and in addressing disparities in serving its large rural population.

“When you combine a large percentage of rural residents who tend to be hard-to-reach populations and have fewer suppliers in an attempt to build a vaccine infrastructure in real time, this is just a recipe for a not very good response , ”Said Sarah McCool, professor of public health at Georgia State University.

In Georgia, the state’s rural health system has been decimated in recent years, with nine hospital closures since 2008, including two last year. Local health departments have become the main suppliers of vaccines in some locations, as employees work to add locations where doses can be administered.

“If we are the only game in town, this process will take a long time,” Lawton Davis, director of a major public health district that includes Savannah, said at a news conference on Monday.

Alabama and Mississippi were also hit hard by the closure of rural hospitals. Seven hospitals have closed in Alabama since 2009 and six in Mississippi since 2005, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina’s Sheps Center. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are among the last five U.S. states in access to health care, according to a 2020 report by a nonprofit foundation connected to insurance giant UnitedHealth.

But generally speaking, experts say it is too early in the vaccine launch to draw conclusions about the region’s shortcomings, and they cannot be easily attributed to a particular factor or trend.

“We are building this plane while we fly, and there will be errors along the way,” said Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who follows the spread of the vaccine in the south.

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