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“I called my primary care doctor’s office and they didn’t hear anything. I called the town nurse and she doesn’t know. I asked and asked and asked, “said McQuilken, who wryly noted that he was able to ask because” when you’re in the 75-plus age group, you’re in contact with doctors.
Tens of thousands of older Massachusetts residents are in the same location as McQuilken. The second phase of the Baker administration’s vaccine rollout, which includes the elderly, was set for February in a schedule released last month. People 75 and over are supposed to be on the front lines.
But last week, state officials did not notify home health workers – a much smaller group who were due to be vaccinated in January – that their injections would not begin until February 1.
That, in turn, could delay the vaccination of 450,000 high-risk residents over the age of 75, almost triple the number of residents vaccinated since the state’s deployment began last month. And a recommendation released Tuesday by the Trump administration, calling on states to immediately begin immunizing all Americans as young as 65, could make the state’s job even more difficult. Gov. Charlie Baker said the state will ask its COVID-19 advisory committee to consider whether to lower the age limit to 65 for the next round of vaccines.
Seniors and their advocates say the delay in vaccinations for home health workers is already increasing the risk for housebound residents who rely on them to wash, dress and prepare meals. “These workers are in the community and should be vaccinated as soon as they can,” said Lisa Gurgone, executive director of Mass Home Care, which provides services to approximately 60,000 homebound seniors across the state.
Access to the vaccine is highly dependent on where older residents live. Those who live in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities are already vaccinated. But residents over 75 who live in low-income elderly apartments run by public housing authorities and some nonprofits are waiting to know when and where they will be vaccinated. Many have been locked in their apartments for months and have experienced physical and cognitive decline.
“You have this patchwork approach,” said Andrew DeFranza, executive director of Harborlight Community Partners, a non-profit organization that operates half a dozen subsidized senior housing sites in Beverly, Rockport and Ipswich. “These are very fragile and very vulnerable people who live in affordable housing for the elderly but who are not yet eligible to receive vaccines.”
State officials directed the first shipments of vaccines to hospitals and long-term care facilities, sites with employees qualified to administer the vaccines. But the logistics got more complex this week when the state designated 119 smaller and more dispersed sites, including schools and centers for the elderly, to immunize first responders such as police, firefighters and medics. emergency. Some of these sites may also be used for seniors and the general population as the deployment grows.
The challenges will multiply again when injections begin for residents over 75 living independently or in senior housing not covered by Phase 1 vaccinations, a larger group than the first three combined. And the pressure to speed up the pace of vaccinations is increasing.
“Everyone thinks we can’t get there fast enough,” said Elissa Sherman, president of Leading Age Massachusetts, which represents aging service providers and nonprofit senior housing operators. “The elderly have endorsed the [pandemic] for 10 long months now, and everyone is looking forward to getting the vaccine as quickly as possible.
Baker said Tuesday that Foxborough’s Gillette Stadium had been designated as the state’s first “regional mass vaccination site”. The site will be operated by CIC Health, with Brigham and Women’s Hospital as medical director and Fallon Ambulance supporting staffing, the governor said.
Immunizations for first responders will begin there on Thursday, initially serving around 300 people per day, but eventually increasing to around 5,000 per day and “potentially a lot more than that over time,” Baker said.
The governor said his administration, which had administered 141,000 doses of the vaccine last Thursday, was preparing to accelerate the deployment of the vaccine. But he said it depends on vaccine allocations coordinated by the federal government, which gives states short notice on when doses will be shipped.
“We will act as quickly as the distribution plan evolves,” said Baker. As of Thursday, the state reported receiving 328,000 doses, not enough to move on to the next phase of vaccination.
The new federal recommendation could complicate what is already a daunting task for Massachusetts officials by making 560,000 additional residents between the ages of 65 and 74 eligible for vaccinations at a time. Baker said his COVID-19 advisory committee would study the plan, although other governors, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City, have said they will drop eligibility at 65.
Some public health experts have questioned the realistic nature of the Trump administration’s proposal given the slow rollout so far and the many obstacles to vaccinations.
“Currently, the country is a long way from vaccinating everyone in the first cluster of priority groups,” said Dr Howard Koh, professor at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and former assistant to the US secretary of health in the Obama administration. “We need much more detailed information on whether the vaccine doses available can also meet the need to cover people over 65.”
Residents over 75 who live in nursing homes and assisted living centers have already received their first vaccines thanks to a federal pharmaceutical partnership that has contracted with CVS and Walgreens to operate clinics on site . Pharmaceutical companies have also opened clinics this week in nursing homes, as well as private senior residence sites and continuing care retirement communities, where residents have access to multiple levels of care on a single campus. .
“As soon as people are vaccinated, we will reopen community life. People are hungry for it, ”said Amy Schectman, president of 2Life Communities, who said residents were mostly confined to their rooms at her organization’s subsidized living centers in Brighton, Brookline, Newton and Framingham.
But residents of other affordable housing, including those operated by more than 200 public housing authorities, have not had the opportunity to enroll in the federal pharmacy program – and they don’t know why.
“Our residents are among the lowest income seniors in the state, and they have yet to be placed on a schedule where they can be vaccinated and return to some normalcy,” said David Hedison, executive director of the Chelmsford Housing Authority and Chairman of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. “All seniors living in subsidized housing should receive the vaccine.”
Martin Finucane of the Globe team contributed to this story.
Robert Weisman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.
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