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RALEIGH, North Carolina – When Ann Camden learned last month that her 17-year-old daughter had been exposed to the coronavirus at school and was being sent home, she packed her things, jumped in the car and drove the two-hour drive to the coast to stay with her recently vaccinated parents.
The 50-year-old mother had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and could not afford to be infected. She was also not eligible under North Carolina rules to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. So she left her twin daughters with her husband and fled to safety.
Across the United States, millions of medically vulnerable people who were initially named as a priority immunization group have been slowly pushed back on the list as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidelines to favor the elderly, regardless. either their physical condition, and workers. in a wide range of employment sectors.
North Carolina is one of 24 states that currently puts people under 65 with “underlying health conditions” down the field to receive the vaccine, according to Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser family. Foundation. A report she wrote for the foundation last month ranked Pennsylvania as the only state to make vaccines available to medically vulnerable people during its first phase of distribution.
When North Carolina unveiled its initial guidelines in October, it put people with multiple chronic conditions at the top of the list. However, in response to the CDC’s December recommendations to prioritize people 75 and older, it dropped people with chronic conditions to phase 2. When guidelines changed again to expand eligibility for People 65 and over, medically vulnerable residents learned in January that they would have moved on to phase 4 – to be vaccinated after “essential frontline workers” but before “everyone else”.
“When they dragged us into Group 4, it was very quiet,” Camden said. “It was like, ‘We don’t want to talk about it. We’re just gonna get you stuck there. It was in itself a little insulting.
The state’s senior public health official, Dr Mandy Cohen, said residents under 65 with chronic illnesses were moved to the bottom of the list after health officials received data showing that elderly residents are much more likely to die from COVID-19, although she acknowledged that “ age is not a perfect indicator of risk. “
Camden decided not to wait for the state to qualify her. Just two days after arriving at her parents’ house, a friend put her in touch with a CVS pharmacist in Wilmington who had doses of the vaccine about to be wasted. Camden received a photo of Moderna in the pharmacist’s dining room on February 21.
“It’s up to all of us to take it when we can get it,” Camden said. “I don’t want to feel guilty or embarrassed because I was going to have it every time I could.”
Jon D’Angelo, a 32-year-old Carteret County resident who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, was not eligible for a vaccine because he does not live in a long-term care facility. He said he skipped the line, but declined to describe where and how he received the vaccine. After a minute’s pause when asked how he justified his actions, he replied, “Justice is more important.”
In response to the frustrations of people like Camden and D’Angelo, states are once again revising their guidelines. As of Monday, 28 states had at least partially opened up eligibility for vaccines statewide to those with high-risk health conditions, Kates said. Four more states are making the vaccine available to medically vulnerable residents living in certain counties.
North Carolina announced this week that it will begin vaccinating people 16 years of age or older with at least one of 18 at-risk conditions on March 17. And last week, the state expanded its eligibility criteria to include people like D’Angelo who receive at-home care. D’Angelo is now eligible retroactively under Phase 1, which launched in December.
“I’m glad they did, but the fact that it took three months to correct is outrageous,” D’Angelo said.
On Monday, South Carolina expanded eligibility for people with disabilities and at risk, and Michigan did so for medically vulnerable residents 50 and older. California opens vaccination to people with disabilities and at risk on March 15.
In Georgia, the governor this week announced that people 16 or older with serious health conditions would be eligible from March 15. Shana Frentz, a 36-year-old woman with two autoimmune conditions, said she got an appointment at a Georgia pharmacy who started signing. people a day before the announcement. Previously, she had explored the possibility of going to a neighboring state. In the months it took before she became eligible in Georgia, she said that she and others like her felt “a little bit left out.”
42-year-old Charlotte-area resident Maura Wozniak has cystic fibrosis and will wait until her turn to get the vaccine. Wozniak was furious at North Carolina’s decision to postpone her, as it meant a longer delay for her children to return to class. But after learning on social media that she would soon become eligible, she cried in relief.
“They were able to hear calls from high-risk individuals in the state,” Wozniak said. “The fact that they gave us a date was promising. Is everything going to be perfect? No, but at least there is some window now.
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Associated Press editor Anila Yoganathan in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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Follow Anderson on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson.
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Anderson is a member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative corps. Report for America is a national, nonprofit service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on secret issues.
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