Lori Lightfoot, left, and Toni Preckwinkle appear on “Chicago Tonight” on May 14, 2018 and October 16, 2017 respectively. (WTTW News)
Chicago and Cook County don’t have enough doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to qualify for Illinois residents with chronic health conditions and the disabled, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chairman of the Cook County Board Toni Preckwinkle said in a rare joint Thursday morning. statement.
Gov. JB Pritzker announced Wednesday that the state would begin vaccinating residents with cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, diabetes, heart disease, sickle cell disease, lung disease and obesity on Feb. 25.
Chicago and Cook County are still vaccinating those who qualify for the first two stages of the vaccination effort: health professionals, residents of long-term care facilities, and people over the age of 65, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle said.
“Our goal is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Lightfoot and Preckwinkle. “That said, our biggest challenge is the very limited supply of vaccines we receive.
“At the moment we are not getting enough doses to make us eligible,” their statement continued.
Emily Bittner, a spokesman for the governor, said Pritzker, “is convinced that the most medically vulnerable in our state should qualify for vaccination as soon as possible and that it would be unfair if medically vulnerable such as cancer patients in Illinois do not receive a vaccination. “
If federal officials approve Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in the coming weeks, that would add nearly 100 million additional doses to the national vaccine supply.
“Federal guidance already includes this vulnerable group, and the governor is mainly invested in expanding access because this group includes a disproportionate proportion of vulnerable people of color,” Bittner said.
The governor’s action will enable local health departments “to make plans to make appointments possible for this group of vulnerable residents,” the governor’s office said.
If the city and county followed the governor’s plan, it would add stress to a vaccination effort that has left many struggling to find an available appointment.
“If you do that in Chicago and Cook County, it would add more than a million people (the current list of eligible vaccinations) and the result would be that those who are currently eligible, including seniors, key frontline workers and those in our most heavily burdened COVID communities, it would be even more difficult to get a vaccine, ”said Lightfoot and Preckwinkle.
Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Health, said Wednesday that the city is only getting enough vaccine for 5% to 10% of Chicago residents already eligible.
The expansion of eligibility may make sense in other areas of Illinois, where there is plenty of supply, Arwady said.
According to the city’s vaccine rollout, all essential Chicago workers and residents aged 16 and older with underlying health conditions will be eligible for vaccination starting March 29, if adequate supply is available.
More than 900,000 Chicago residents would be eligible in the next phase of the effort, Arwady said. But the city doesn’t have “anywhere near” enough vaccine to meet that demand, she added.
Chicago gets about 6,000 doses of the vaccine every day, an increase of about 300 doses, Arwady said.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]