When Louisiana expanded vaccine eligibility earlier this week for anyone over the age of 16 with a long list of medical conditions, the state moved overnight to one of the most open states in the U.S. when it comes to who can get a coup.
About three out of four adults in Louisiana are estimated to meet the broad category of “overweight” or “obese” that would allow them to receive a coronavirus vaccine, and probably many more would be eligible for other medical conditions, such as be cancer and “smoking”. according to the new rules launched on Tuesday.
Dr. Shantel Hebert-Magee, the newly appointed Medical Director of Region 1 for the Louisiana Department of Health, estimated that, along with previous eligibility rules, which allowed all people over the age of 65 and other groups to be shot. , “We are close to covering 80% to 90% of our population. “
“A significant portion of our population has comorbidities,” she said.
The approach is broader than that of many states, which have put more bureaucracies in terms of eligibility, limiting the types of conditions or requiring people of a certain age to qualify.
The effort to get Louisianans vaccinated against coronavirus aims to vaccinate people as soon as possible, while prioritizing age …
For example, Louisiana is one of three states in the country that is open to 16-year-olds, with one in two dozen conditions.
The state allows conditions that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have considered puts people at increased risk for serious diseases, such as obesity and cancer, but also draws from a second, broader list. This list includes conditions such as asthma, with a body mass index over 25 or having type 1 diabetes.
Many states choose and choose diseases from both lists, but do not include them all. Texas, for example, includes 11 of the 12 highest-risk conditions, but omits smoking. Ohio does not allow heart disease or cancer, but it does allow people with Down syndrome and sickle cells to be vaccinated. Some states require two or more conditions for vaccination or limit eligibility to the elderly.
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, people over the age of 60 have just become eligible this week, down from 65, although there is a resolution for government and non-profit public workers.
“Louisiana throws out a wider network than many states,” said Jennifer Kates, a health analyst and researcher at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
In the back of a room about the size of two football fields, Mary Francis was sitting in a wheelchair with her daughter beside her. Before, a …
Governor John Bel Edwards said Tuesday that the decision to extend eligibility came after a “weakening” of weekend appointments and was taken to prevent hospitalizations and deaths as more transmissible variants gain ground.
“Our main goal in setting priorities for vaccination would be to preserve the capacity of the hospital and save lives. That is why we work with people with comorbid health conditions that predispose them to a poor result “, he said.
Governor John Bel Edwards speaks at a news conference updating COVID-19’s response on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, at the Baton Rouge State Chapter. Edwards said Tuesday that people 16 and older with certain health conditions are now eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine, a dramatic expansion of Louisiana’s efforts to overcome the pandemic. Sign language interpreter Sylvie Sullivan is in the background.
The new qualifications have been developed with essential workers in mind, with the intention that many conditions will qualify them. This is generally true, Kates said, but it is not true for everyone.
And some key workers say they feel left behind.
Marjeta Wolfe is a 21-year-old restaurant that welcomes Jefferson Parish and is a college student, where she is exposed to large groups of people inside. He has a condition of the vocal cords and has been in a daily inhaler for eight years.
“My mother and I researched the ingredients on Google,” she said, trying to see if her inhaler was considered a corticosteroid. But she doesn’t make the cut.
Helen Woo, 49, is a registered dietitian who works at a pantry in New Orleans. Nor does it qualify under the extended guidelines.
“I know people who lied or traveled to another state to get vaccinated,” Woo said. “I do not want to do that. I’m not going to pretend I’m sick or dress like an old lady so I can shoot myself. “
When people aged 70 and over became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in January, New Orleans resident Phil Costa began calling a …
Both Woo and Wolfe say they don’t want to enforce the rules or lie, and instead try to find the “remaining” vaccines, but are frustrated not to be included as essential workers.
“I feel that people like us, who provide essential services and interact with the public, should be given a certain priority over people who work safely from home and do not interact with anyone,” Woo said.
The lack of focus on essential workers is something that epidemiologist Susan Hassig has been pursuing throughout the country.
“I would argue that you should do work-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 might be exposed.”
Balancing the distribution of the vaccine between the risk of disease and the risk of exposure is difficult, said Mike Springborn, a health resource economist at the University of California, Davis.
“There are trade-offs everywhere,” he said, adding that in some cases the best method is direct vaccination of vulnerable people, but in other conditions it is more important to simply reduce the spread to the wider community.
In early February 2020, doctors and scientists entered an auditorium at LSU Medical School in New Orleans. Standing shoulder to shoulder, …
One problem with this is that there is no good data on how well vaccines prevent transmission. Another problem is that some people may not realize that they have one of the qualifications.
Brenda Rainbolt’s family urged her to tick the box to qualify because she smoked 20 years ago, but the 64-year-old thought it was a lie – in addition, she had to enter the information insurance and did not want it to affect her. covering.
“I don’t feel comfortable marking that block when she writes smoking,” said Rainbolt, who works in a public library and lives in Shreveport with her son, a high school history teacher and football coach, and his daughter-in-law, an intensive care unit. nurse on the COVID floor. “My health insurance is non-smoking. And the rest don’t fit at all. ”
It was only when he spoke to a reporter that he put his weight and height in a BMI computer that he realized that he had a BMI of 25.6, above the threshold.
“If a person doesn’t define themselves that way or isn’t diagnosed or uncomfortable, they’re not likely to be in that group,” Kates said.
Being a few decimal places outside of the required BMI or having an unlisted medical condition is not something people should worry about, Hassig said.
“I would tell them to tick a box and get vaccinated,” Hassig said.