Atrisk now join hunt for vaccine
Access spotty for newly eligible with disabilities
Even as California, including many Bay Area counties, opened up coronavirus vaccine eligibility to roughly 4.4 million younger residents with disabilities and underlying medical conditions on Monday, access to appointments remained spotty for some.
Jenny Panighetti, who lives in Mountain View and uses a wheelchair because of arthrogryposis, a muscle and joint disease, has been trying since last week to book a vaccine appointment. But she found that many sites are either not scheduling firstdose shots or have yet to update their eligibility to include people under 65 with disabilities or health conditions associated with serious illness and death from COVID19.
Under California guidelines, this group was eligible for vaccines starting Monday. But the same supply constraints that have plagued the
state’s vaccination rollout for months will likely mean that some people like Panighetti may have to wait weeks before they can get their shots.
“It’s so frustrating,” said Panighetti, 38. “I don’t know what to do. I understand there’s not enough vaccine, so I get that. It’s just hard when you don’t even see an update.”
But in San Francisco, which on Monday opened up appointments at the mass vaccination site at Moscone Center for eligible people under 65, many residents were able to schedule appointments for this week and next week.
“What’s most common is there’s a lack of uniformity across different counties,” said Lawrence CarterLong of the Berkeleybased advocacy group Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. “What you’re likely to get in one place, one ZIP code, is not the same as you’re going to get in another.”
Several states, including Alaska, Michigan and Utah, have opened or plan to soon open vaccines to everyone 16 and older, as the United States inches closer to the goal set by President Biden to have vaccines available to all adults by May 1.
California last week expanded eligibility to people 16 or older with disabilities, certain underlying medical conditions, and to people 16 or older who are public transit workers or who live or work in highrisk congregate settings, including incarcerated populations. People who are homeless also are included in this group.
The qualifying underlying medical conditions are cancer, chronic kidney disease at stage 4 or above, chronic pulmonary disease, Down syndrome, solid organ transplant recipient, pregnancy, sickle cell disease, certain heart conditions, severe obesity defined as a body mass index of 40 or higher, and Type 2 diabetes.
A disability qualifies if someone is likely to develop lifethreatening illness or death from the coronavirus, or if acquiring COVID19 will limit their ability to receive care vital to their survival.
Counties can adopt slightly different prioritization rules depending on local needs and vaccine supply. For example, some counties vaccinated teachers at the same time they were vaccinating people 65 and over, while other counties focused on 65andolder residents first.
In this latest eligibility group, San Francisco set a lower bar than the state for what qualifies as obese and thus who is eligible for vaccines; people need only have a BMI of 30 or higher. San Francisco also includes people with HIV in the list of those who are eligible.
Despite fits and starts, the Bay Area is making progress vaccinating residents. About 27% of San Francisco residents 16 and older have received their first dose, Mayor London Breed said Friday. In Santa Clara County, 23% of residents 16 and older have received their first dose, and 30% of Alameda County residents 16 and older have had a first dose, according to county data.
Several counties already have started targeting highrisk homeless populations for vaccines, at brickandmortar clinics and through mobile vaccination units.
Denise Porter, a 47yearold homeless woman in Martinez, got the Johnson & Johnson shot on Monday at a mobile vaccine clinic run by Contra Costa County. She received word of the clinic Friday at Martinez’s weekly mobile showers.
“I was happy to hear about it because COVID has been killing a lot of people,” said Porter, who lost her housing after a relationship split in July.
“It’s been kind of depressing,” she said moments after she received the vaccine. She hopes the vaccine will turn her prospects around and she can try to get a job “helping people.”
The county began targeting homeless residents on Friday, giving shots to 30 people staying in Concord motel rooms as part of Project Roomkey, a state program to house the homeless in hotels during the pandemic. They have been using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires one shot. The two other vaccines available in the United States, made by Pfizer and Moderna, require two shots.
“We see that as a huge benefit” because it can be difficult tracking down homeless residents for second doses, said Linae Altman, a Contra Costa County public health program specialist who runs the Healthcare for the Homeless program.
In the county’s 2020 homeless count, Contra Costa County tallied about 2,000 people. So far, in the infancy of the homeless vaccine outreach, about half of them have agreed to get shots, Altman said. She said she believed those numbers would rise as they continue to visit encampments into the summer.
The county vaccinated 15 people at the clinic Monday morning. A third clinic is scheduled in Martinez on Friday.