Michigan essential workers now among those competing for a short supply of COVID-19 vaccines
Updated Jan 22, 2021;
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Those essential workers are finding themselves now competing for the state’s limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
Not including vaccine allocations for long-term care facility staff and residents, Michigan has been getting about 60,000 first doses a week for residents age 65 and older as well as a select list of essential workers, including teachers below the college level, police and other first-responders, jail and prison employers and front-line state and federal workers.
Seniors are the largest group Michigan has 1.8 million residents in that age range and also the most vulnerable to COVID-19. For those reasons, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services are recommended that health-care providers allocate about 75% of the vaccine doses they receive for seniors, with the remaining 25% available for essential workers.
What that s meant for Steve Hall, health officer at the Central Michigan District Health Department, is having to continually “shift on the fly.”
For example, when Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that residents 65 and older would become eligible to get their shots, Hall learned that his department would stop receiving Moderna shipments.
So, he put in an order for Pfizer doses, but without having secured access to the necessary cold freezer storage.
“Thankfully we have a great relationship with [Central Michigan University] and they offered up [their ultra-cold freezer], so we certainly took them up on that offer,” he said.
Other rural health officials agree that being responsive and looking for local support will guide them though the uncertainty.
Why Michigan’s senior residents are struggling to schedule COVID-19 vaccines
Updated Jan 13, 2021;
Posted Jan 13, 2021
A vial of the Pfizer COVID-19 sits on a table waiting to be administered to healthcare workers at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, on Thursday, December 17, 2020. (Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)Mike Mulholland | MLive.com
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Michigan’s older residents are among the newly eligible groups for COVID-19 vaccination, though limited vaccine supplies and varying capabilities across the state’s 45 local health departments have made scheduling appointments difficult.
Some health departments have begun scheduling appointments and hosting clinics for residents 65 years and older, while others have announced they don’t have the supplies or capacity to begin moving onto the next priority groups, as of Tuesday, Jan. 12.
CADILLAC â If you re old enough, starting on Monday in Michigan, you were eligible to get vaccinated no matter your job description or living arrangements.
In Phase 1B of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution, people age 65 or older can receive the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Spectrum Health announced on Monday that they d started doing just that, though not at a clinic within the Cadillac News coverage area.
Central Michigan District Health Department, the health department with jurisdiction in Osceola County, said on Monday that are still vaccinating people in the 1A priority group (that includes health care workers and long-term care residents) and was beginning to vaccinate people in the 1B priority group.
Vaccinating Michigan’s long-term residents is high priority, but off to slow start
Updated Jan 12, 2021;
Posted Jan 12, 2021
A staff member at the SKLD nursing facility in Grand Rapids receives a COVID-19 vaccine from Tonino Michienzi of Walgreens. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services)
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Colleen Peters, a resident of StoryPoint Senior Living in Portage, thought she would get her COVID-19 vaccination last week, only to see the vaccination clinic at the complex canceled.
“We were told they didn’t have enough vaccine,” Peters said. “I told my son, we live six blocks from the place where they make it and we still can’t get it.”