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The next group of Hoosiers eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines will be those age 60 to 64, but state health officials say they still don’t yet know exactly when that will happen.
Nearly 300 sites around Indiana are giving shots to people age 65 to 69, with about 55% of the state’s population in that age group already receiving at least one dose.
“Because supplies remain limited, we will keep our current eligibility at 65 and older this week, so we can fully analyze the number of second-dose appointments against existing and projected inventory,” Dr. Kris Box, the state health commissioner, said Wednesday afternoon at Gov. Eric Holcomb’s weekly press conference.
She said the goal is to ensure the state has all of the second doses covered before it opens more age groups. Indiana is receiving about 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines a week.
Over the next several weeks, state health officials hope to expand eligibility, first to people 60 to 64, then to people 50 and above.
“Nearly 858,000 Hoosiers are in their 50s, so expanding it to this group will be a large undertaking that will require ample supplies of vaccine,” said Dr. Lindsay Weaver, the health department’s chief medical officer. “Again, I urge you to please be patient while we wait for those supplies to arrive.”
At the same time the state is opening eligibility to people in their 50s, it will also allow people with certain medical conditions to receive the vaccine. Those conditions include people receiving dialysis; those with sickle cell disease; solid organ transplant recipients; those with Down syndrome; or people actively receiving cancer treatment or who have primary lung cancer or blood cancers.
“We know that these categories do not include all Hoosiers who have conditions that could put them at greater risk for COVID,” Weaver said. “But we are working to expand to those most at risk as quickly as our vaccine supplies allow us to do so.”
State officials say they are constantly pressing the federal government, which controls the vaccine inventory, to give Indiana more supply, because the state has built a vaccination network that can handle many more shots per day.
“We’re being very methodical about this,” Holcomb said. “Of course, we want more.”
Meanwhile, the federal government is rolling out a separate program with pharmacies across the nation, including 160 in Indiana, to administer shots.
That will not cut into Indiana’s weekly allotment, state health officials said, but patients will have to meet the state’s eligibility criteria to make an appointment for those vaccinations.
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Just open it up to everyone and let them get vaccinated. There are people who aren’t showing up for appointments and others who want to get vaccinated but can’t.
It’s obvious that they just need to open it up to everybody. After people 60+ have it, just let demand do its thing. Every single person who gets vaccinated makes everybody safer. The more people vaccinated, the better.
Opening it up to everyone doesn’t vaccinate “more people.” The exact same number of people will get the vax -because there is only so much vax to go around currently. The difference would be that people at lower risk of developing severe cases of COVID would get the vax before those more likely to get a severe case.
+1
This may sound like counter-intuitive; however, the state has TOO MANY sites. I say this because the complexity of inventory management, quality control, cold-chain requirements, etc becomes enormously challenging across that many platforms. Each of these 300 sites are run independently by county health departments, private pharmacies, etc. The chance for mishandling of the vaccine increases, over supply in some locations with under supply in others. The state would be well served to set up 15-20 well placed mass vaccination sites, supplementing in designated, underserved areas with smaller clinics. Doing this will provide proactive preparation as the likelihood of vaccine availability increases, while reducing waste and improving operational efficiencies at the same time.