Indiana holding firm to vaccination by age group, not occupation

Registered nurse Stacey Meskimen gives 86-year-old Bruce Melchert the first of two shots for his COVID-19 vaccine in January. Melchert's daughter helped him sign up as soon as the appointments went online. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)

Teachers, retail workers, food suppliers and other essential workers who interact with the public will have to continue to wait for their COVID-19 vaccinations in Indiana until everyone over age 60 who wants one gets a shot first.

Indiana health officials said Wednesday that, with limited supplies of vaccines, they will stick with their plan of giving priority to people in higher age groups, health care workers and first responders.

“I know many Hoosiers are frustrated that we do not have enough vaccine to open doses to everyone who wants a vaccine right now,” state health commissioner Dr. Kris Box said. “Indiana has more than 2 million essential workers who go to work every day to put food on our tables, keep our lights on, keep the heat on and educate our children. All of these individuals have an increased risk of exposure simply because they’re leaving their immediate households and engaging with other people so our society can continue to function.”

But, she added, the state gets only about 100,000 vaccine doses a week and has to make hard choices about who will get shots first.

“As long as vaccine supplies remain limited, we will continue to prioritize individuals who are most likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19,” she said. “As we have mentioned several times, people aged 60 and older account for 64% of our hospitalizations and 93% of our deaths.”

The state has been offering vaccines to people by age group, in descending order, with the goal of vaccinating the most elderly and vulnerable first. On Monday, it widened the eligibility to people 65 and older.

The issue of who is eligible came up repeatedly during Gov. Eric Holcomb’s weekly press conference, as tension continues to build over who is eligible for vaccines.

Indiana has yet to offer vaccinations to teachers, even though at least 23 other states have done so, including Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that health care staffers and residents of long-term-care facilities should get shots first, followed by a second-priority group of adults 75 or older and “essential” workers, including teachers. The federal guidance, however, is not binding on states.

Holcomb said some teachers have expressed appreciation that the state is “taking care of their grandmother or grandfather or mother or father.”

He said Indiana’s approach is to focus on the most at-risk population, and that won’t change. Holcomb, 52, said he has not received a vaccination himself, and won’t until Box tells him it is his turn.

“I’m going to practice what I preach and follow the proper protocol,” he said. “And I’m certainly not going to jump ahead in line and take it from someone who needs it a lot more than I do right now.”

More than 611,000 Hoosiers have received their first dose of the vaccine as of Wednesday, an increase of 134,000 from last week, Box said.

The state is also studying who might be vulnerable as a result of medical conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, kidney disease or dialysis, Box said. They could be next in line, depending on how likely it is they would be hospitalized or die if infected with the novel coronavirus.

In addition to people in age groups, nearly 43,000 residents in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities have received vaccinations, along with nearly 17,000 staff.

Health officials said the overall picture in Indiana is encouraging, as the number of hospitalizations and daily hospital admissions continues to fall.

Box added that the state recently completed a year-end audit of COVID-19 deaths, which required the health department to match every death certificate that indicated infection with COVID-19 as a cause of death or a contributing cause of death to a positive COVID-19 test.

As a result, the state has identified 1,205 additional COVID-19 deaths from 2020 and 302 from 2021 that will be added to the health department’s dashboard this week. That will push the state’s cumulative number of deaths from COVID-19 well over 10,000. As of Wednesday, the state had reported 9,713 deaths from the virus.