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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 7
Vaccines
Continued from page 5
rollout — including healthcare workers, first responders, and residents of long- term-care facilities, assisted-living centers, and congregate care — Massachusetts has been in phase 2 for most of February.
Newly eligible groups include individu- als 65 and over, including residents and staff of low-income and affordable public and private senior housing, and indi- viduals age 16 and older with two or more co-morbidities, from a list that includes asthma, cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
pushed for was to allow individuals unable to access the internet to call the state’s
211 information number and follow the prompts to make vaccine appointments by phone.
“Focusing only on an online system doesn’t work; we need a phone option,”
he said, noting that a ‘digital divide’ exists for many older, poorer, or rural residents. Also, “we need to dramatically simplify
the website. There are too many links, too many places people have to navigate to find out where to go.”
Lesser would also like to see more local and even mobile options people can access. “The state’s approach has been to bring
people to the vaccine, but we need to be deliberate about the mindset of bringing the vaccine to the people,” he said. “There are a lot of things we can’t control — we are at the mercy of the federal government with the number of doses — but we can control how we distribute them and how we get them into people’s arms.”
Earlier this month, during the Mas- sachusetts Medical Society’s monthly COVID-19 conference call with DPH physicians, Dr. Kevin Cranston, assistant commissioner and director of the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sci- ences, said individuals with two or more co-morbidities will not have to prove those
conditions in any way, as the system essen- tially operates by self-attestation.
“We’re not asking patients to go back
to their clinicians, their primary-care providers, for medical evidence, and we’re not asking physicians to make clinical judg- ments,” he noted.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown also talked about the DPH’s public vaccine-confidence campaign.
“The campaign recognizes that there are particular populations, especially people of color and other minority populations, that may have understandable increased con-
Please see Vaccines, page 36
Dr. Sarah Haessler
Down syndrome, certain heart conditions, weakened immune system from solid organ transplant, obesity, pregnancy, sickle-cell disease, smoking, and type-2 diabetes.
Later in phase 2, access will roll out
to workers in the fields of education, transit, grocery stores, utilities, agriculture, public works, and public health, as well as individuals with one co-morbidity. Phase 3, expected to begin in April, will include everyone else.
Demand, as noted, is high. Even for the groups recently given the green light in phase 2, it could take more than a month for all eligible individuals to secure an available appointment unless federal supply significantly increases, Gov. Charlie Baker noted. Recently, Massachusetts has been receiving approximately 110,000 first doses per week from the federal government, and residents are encouraged to keep check-
ing the state website as appointments are added on a rolling basis.
“This has been a hard year for everyone, but I do think there is light at the end of the tunnel as we see the vaccines do work,” Lesser said at the webinar. “The key chal- lenge is making sure the vaccine is distrib- uted in an equitable and speedy way, and certainly that our communities in Western Mass. are not left out of that.”
One change he and other legislators
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