Earlier this week, when Louisiana became eligible for the vaccine for anyone over the age of 16 with a long list of medical conditions, the state shifted overnight to one of the most open states in the U.S. when it comes to who a chance.
It is estimated that nearly three in four adults in Louisiana meet the broad ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ category that could give them a coronavirus vaccine, and many more could potentially qualify because of other medical conditions such as cancer and ‘smoking ‘. under new rules released Tuesday.
Dr. Shantel Hebert-Magee, the newly appointed Region 1 medical director for the Louisiana Department of Health, estimated that, along with previous admission rules that allowed all over-65s and some other groups to receive an injection, “we were about 80 % to 90% of our population. “
“A significant portion of our population has comorbidities,” she said.
The approach goes beyond that of many states, which have increased the red tape around eligibility by limiting the types of conditions or by requiring people to be of a certain age to be eligible.
The drive to get Louisians vaccinated against the coronavirus is to get people vaccinated as soon as possible, giving priority to the field …
Louisiana, for example, is one of only three states in the country open to people over the age of 16 with one of nearly two dozen conditions.
The state allows conditions that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have believed put people at an increased risk for serious illnesses, such as obesity and cancer, but also pulls from a second, broader list. That list includes conditions such as asthma, a body-mass index over 25, or type 1 diabetes.
Many states choose diseases from both lists, but do not include them all. Texas, for example, contains 11 of the 12 most risky conditions, but omits smoking. Ohio does not allow heart disease or cancer, but it does allow people with Down syndrome and sickle cell anemia to be vaccinated. Some states require two or more conditions for vaccination or limit the qualifications of the condition to older people.
And while a handful of states allow providers to decide whether a patient should be vaccinated, many others are much more restrictive. In New York this week, people over 60 were eligible, down from 65, although there is a carve-out for public nonprofits and government employees.
“Louisiana sheds a bigger net than many other states,” said Jennifer Kates, health policy analyst and researcher at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
At the back of a room roughly the size of two football fields, Mary Francis was sitting in a wheelchair, her daughter by her side. Come on, a gi …
Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Tuesday that the decision to expand eligibility came after a “delay” in appointments over the weekend and was taken with the aim of avoiding hospitalizations and deaths as more transferable variants gain ground.
“Our primary goal in setting vaccination priorities would be to maintain hospital capacity and save lives. That’s why we work with people with comorbid health conditions that predispose them to a bad outcome, ”he said.
Gov. John Bel Edwards speaks at a press conference on updating the state’s COVID-19 response Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Edwards said Tuesday that people 16 and older with certain health conditions are now eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, a dramatic extension in Louisiana’s attempt to overcome the pandemic. Sign language interpreter Sylvie Sullivan is in the background.
The new qualifications were developed with the essential employees in mind, with the understanding that the many conditions would qualify them. That’s broadly true, Kates said, but it’s not true for everyone.
And some key workers say they feel like they’ve been left behind.
Marjeta Wolfe is a 21-year-old restaurant greeter in Jefferson Parish and a college student, where she is exposed to large groups of people indoors. She has a vocal cord disorder and has been using a daily inhaler for eight years.
“My mom and I Googled the ingredients,” she said, trying to see if her inhaler counts as a corticosteroid. But she won’t make it.
Helen Woo, 49, is a registered dietitian nutritionist who works in a New Orleans pantry. She also does not qualify for the comprehensive guidelines.
“I know people who have lied or traveled to another state to get a vaccine,” Woo said. ‘I do not want to do that. I’m not going to pretend I have a disease or dress up like an old lady so I can have my chance. “
When people 70 or older became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in January in Louisiana, New Orleans resident Phil Costa started a …
Both Woo and Wolfe say they don’t want to bend the rules or lie and instead try to find “leftover” vaccines, but they are frustrated that they are not being included as essential workers.
“I feel like people like us who provide essential services and interact with the public should be given a certain priority over those who work safely from home and don’t interact with anyone,” said Woo.
The lack of focus on key workers is something epidemiologist Susan Hassig has seen across the country.
“I would say you should do workplace-oriented vaccinations, that we should have mobile units set up in the French Quarter, where there is a high density of restaurant workers,” Hassig said. “They don’t have much control over how they can be exposed.”
It’s difficult to balance the vaccine distribution between disease risk and exposure risk, says Mike Springborn, a health resource economist at the University of California, Davis.
“There are tradeoffs all over the place,” he said, adding that in some cases the best method is to directly vaccinate vulnerable people, but in other circumstances it is more important to simply reduce the spread in the wider community.
In early February 2020, doctors and scientists entered an auditorium of LSU’s medical school in New Orleans. Sit shoulder to shoulder, …
A problem with this is that there is no good data on how well the vaccines prevent transmission. Another problem is that some people may not realize they have one of the qualifications.
Brenda Rainbolt’s family urged her to mark the smoking box for eligibility as she smoked 20 years ago, but the 64-year-old thought that was a lie – and she had to enter her insurance details and didn’t want that. would affect its coverage.
“I don’t feel comfortable marking that block when it says smoking,” says Rainbolt, who works in a public library and lives in Shreveport with her son, a high school history teacher and soccer coach, and daughter-in-law, an ICU. . nurse on the COVID floor. “My health insurance has me as a non-smoker. And the rest doesn’t fit at all. “
It wasn’t until she spoke to a reporter and tapped her weight and height into a BMI calculator that she realized she had a BMI of 25.6, above the threshold.
“If a person doesn’t define themselves that way, or if they go undiagnosed or feel uncomfortable coming up, they’re probably not going to put themselves in that group,” Kates said.
Being a few decimal places off the required BMI or having an unlisted medical condition isn’t something people should be concerned about, Hassig said.
“I’d tell them to tick a box and get vaccinated,” Hassig said.