BAKER UNDER FIRE OVER VAX ROLLOUT
Governor blames distribution
Lawmakers sparred with Gov. Charlie Baker and administration officials during a heated, six-hour hearing where they took aim at constant pivots in the vaccine rollout and blasted online signup efforts as “a failure.”
Baker has repeatedly cautioned that the rollout would be “lumpy and bumpy.” But in one particularly heated exchange, state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, said “it has not been lumpy and bumpy, it has been a failure.”
“Nobody disagrees with you that the supply is limited, but in theory, if a million doses were available in the state, but the website still crashed, it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Lesser said during the Thursday hearing.
Defending his efforts during his hour-long testimony, the Republican governor repeatedly pointed to a lack of vaccine supply, laying blame on the federal government.
A defiant Baker further dug in his heels during an appearance in Salem later in the day. Despite reports of problems from lawmakers and residents alike, the Republican governor said there was “no widespread failure” with the state’s website on Thursday morning and repeated common refrains about a lack of vaccine supply.
“The biggest challenge we have is we don’t have enough appointments and the reason don’t have enough appointments is because we don’t have enough supply,” Baker said.
Rep. William Driscoll, the House chairman of the Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management, said, “I think you’re missing how broken the system is right now, and the approach is not working for the citizens of the commonwealth. It needs to be addressed.”
Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, criticized the “ricocheting decision” of the Baker administration to cut local boards of health off from vaccine supplies last week, after initially naming them as a distribution partner.
Merridith O’Leary, Northampton public health director, said after initial praise, the state pivoted to prioritizing doses for mass vaccination sites instead.
“They’ve ripped that our from right under us and they are hiring vendors to give our vaccines that have no public health background,” O’Leary said.
Health Secretary Marylou Sudders said, “I understand and completely concur that there cannot be one channel for administration to achieve effectiveness, efficiency, and equity, but there also can’t be infinite channels when there is constrained supply.”
Following the hearing Driscoll, D-Milton, told the Herald there “weren’t really a lot of hard, clear answers” on what the state’s working on changing.
“Certainly there are considerations and concerns about the level of supply from the federal government in terms of distribution of doses, but that can’t be blamed for all of the issues. Vaccine doses don’t break a website. Vaccine doses don’t pull themselves away from a local board of health,” Driscoll said.
The committee will hold a second hearing on March 11, which Baker has agreed to attend.