The older ones are waiting for a word on the vaccine: how will they know we’re here?

As Barry Hoffman, 84, watches the public rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, all he wants is acknowledgment of its existence.

Hoffman, from Cape Elizabeth, moved to Maine about ten years ago, leaving his longtime primary care doctor in Boston. He only sees a cardiologist in Maine. And after nine months of social distancing, staying home and playing it safe, he fears that by the time of his vaccination he will be forgotten.

“My big question is, who knows about me? What do I do now? Sit down and wait? Hoffman said last week. “I would like to be recognized that I exist and then receive a notification that I am here and waiting. I don’t mind waiting, but I just want to make sure I don’t fall through the cracks.

For now, Maine is still following federal guidelines that place Hoffman at Level 1B in the state’s immunization plan. This plan includes people aged 75 and over as the second group to receive doses of the vaccine, behind frontline medical workers and people living in collective care settings like nursing homes and residences- services. Group 1B also includes essential workers including police, firefighters, grocery store workers, and others.

As the state plans to reverse that order and put the elderly ahead of essential workers, as some other states have chosen to do, Hoffman is forced to wait and wonder when and how he will receive the vaccine.

“I tell my patients to be patient,” said Dr. James W. Jarvis, a family physician at Northern Light Health’s Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, who is leading the COVID response from the health care network. State, a team of several hundred people, he said.

“A lot of people want to know where they are on the list, but unfortunately there is no list because the schedules are still pending,” Jarvis said. “We know there will be some very good announcements as to who or when they will get a vaccine.”

Jarvis suggested the state could use a system based on birthdays or last names to determine how to immunize the population. But again, these decisions have yet to be made.

And with vaccine shipments and deployment slower than expected, Hoffman and many of his peers are getting anxious, and with good reason. Estimates for the start of 1B vaccinations are uncertain, and the end of January to February appeared to be a likely schedule. But for anyone over the age of 70 in Maine, the calculation of the wait is obvious and frightening.

Of the 347 COVID-related deaths on Thursday, 296 were people aged 70 or older, or 85% of the deaths here. When you include people aged 60 and over, the figure is overwhelming 96%. One caveat to these numbers is that many of them, about half of those who died, were living in collective care facilities.

Maine remains the oldest state in the country. Of the approximately 1.3 million inhabitants, 107,000 are aged 75 and over. When you count people aged 65 and over, that number rises to 260,000 people, or nearly 20% of the population, according to recent US Census estimates.

Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that the first vaccines be sent to collective care seniors and frontline medical workers, so that the state health system still has the capacity to treat patients. COVID as well as all other sick or injured. other causes.

Maine public health officials say they are doing everything to organize the deployment as quickly as possible to reach the older Mainers living in the home. So far, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention has adhered closely to federal guidelines that put people aged 75 and older on par with police officers and grocery store workers, and ahead of their elderly peers. 65 to 75 – but even that decree is not set in stone.

Other states, including Florida and Texas, have decided to prioritize people aged 60 and over, and in many counties in Florida, older people in wheelchairs, relying on walkers and canopies. of blankets waited outside for hours in line at vaccination sites, trying to secure their first dose.

Details of the deployment to the former Mainers are still being worked out, but the CDC of Maine recently said the state would likely rely on primary care physicians or other healthcare professionals to educate their patients more elderly when they are eligible for vaccination. These details will be announced in the coming weeks by state news media.

The wait for clear guidelines has done nothing to calm the nerves of people like 74-year-old and three-month-old Jacqueline Lessard, which means she will have to wait even longer to get a vaccine if current standards are met. . Lessard typically spends winters in Florida – if she was there now, she could be one of those thousands of old people in line.

But from the end of October, Lessard decided to stay in Maine and moved in with her 99-year-old mother to Augusta full-time to help her through the winter. Her mother’s doctor said that at 99, COVID was almost certainly a death sentence. This puts even more pressure on Lessard to minimize her chances of getting sick and make sure she and her mother get the vaccine as soon as possible.

“I know it’s very difficult to go through this (decision process) who’s going to get it and who isn’t going to have it,” Lessard said. “I fully understand (that) first responders and doctors have to be first in line. I used to work on a rescue, I understand. When I hear that… the cashiers are going to do better than the elderly, it leaves me emotionally exhausted.

Lessard has been trying for days to get answers on what the plan will be, she said, and she tries every opportunity to put pressure on officials, no matter how small. She called a local aging agency first, then the Maine CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services. She tried to find the phone number of Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine CDC, to vent her frustration.

When a reporter told him that it was the federal CDC that decided the number of doses distributed to each state, Lessard did not miss a beat. “Do you have a number for them?”

Armand Bouchard, 81, and his wife, Anne, 80, said they wanted better communication from health officials about what they know and what they don’t know about who will be vaccinated and when.

“Will someone call me someday and say, ‘Hey, your name just got mentioned, be at this place at 10 am tomorrow’?” Said Armand Bouchard. “Maybe they’re not at this point, but if they’re not, they should say it. At least we would know. And if it turns out that they know I won’t have anything before March, I’ll write it on my calendar in March with a question mark. “

Les Bouchards, of Harpswell, said they had received notification from their health care provider, Martin’s Point Health Care, that they would be notified when the vaccine was available. But that’s only a slight comfort, he said, because “I don’t know how much information they actually have.”

Geriatricians and family physicians say they hear these same questions over and over again, but they still have few good answers.

In general, older people have a generally positive outlook on health care and vaccines. They are used to taking medicines and vaccines, including those given mainly to the elderly for illnesses such as pneumococcal pneumonia, shingles, and the annual flu variant. They are also less likely to spend time on Facebook than people in their 50s and 60s, many of whom consume baseless internet conspiracy theories that have undermined confidence in vaccines, said Dr Cliff Singer, chief of staff. Geriatric Mental Health and Neuropsychiatry at Northern Light Health. and president of the Dirigo Maine Geriatrics Society, a group of 78 geriatrics and gerontologists.

“They grew up when polio was a concern,” Singer said. “They have grown up and have seen childhood illnesses decrease thanks to healthy vaccination rates.”

Singer said he understood the argument of vaccinating the elderly first, but agreed with the state’s prioritization plan.

“This is obviously an area rich in ethical debates,” Singer said. “But you need essential workers to take care of the elderly. I think the Maine CDC has the right prioritization. “

He added that older people will be vaccinated in the near future, but that they are not as much of a risk as people who live in “collective care centers or the people who care for them in those settings.” “.

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