Early Data Find AstraZenecas COVID-19 Vaccine Effective

A state vaccine panel Friday rejected several proposals to recommend more workers become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines immediately. The series of votes, largely against adding specific jobs, such as massage therapists, to existing priority groups caps a week of tumult for Idahoans age 65 and up. More than a quarter-million group of seniors eager for immunization became eligible for shots Feb. 1, overwhelming online scheduling forms and phone hotlines. The race for shots highlighted inequitable signup methods as vaccine providers tried to make clear that they simply don't have enough shots for everyone who wants them. At the state's current rate of 25,000 shots coming in weekly, leaders estimate it'll take at least two months to vaccinate all seniors.

Idahoans with health conditions that put them at high-risk for COVID-19 complications, such as diabetes and obesity, are projected to start getting the vaccine in early April. Official decisions about that group will happen in the coming weeks.

A consistent worry in the panel's discussions Friday was that putting more people at the top of the list would further lengthen the process of protecting those at highest risk.

"To me, it doesn't make any sense to put" caregivers of medically vulnerable people "ahead of the people they're taking care of," Randall Hudspeth, state nursing association head, said as he and others shot down the first of several proposals to modify existing priority groups that already include 400,000 people.

Gov. Brad Little has the final call on vaccine priority in Idaho. The state health department said in a news release that Little's decisions on the recommendations will occur by early the week of Feb. 8. More than half of those currently eligible for shots in Idaho are seniors who don't live in nursing homes or other congregate living facilities.

Just one group, an estimated 280 language interpreters, were recommended to be eligible immediately Friday. The panel said interpreters should be vaccinated "with the sector and setting in which they work," which could push some who work in hospitals or K-12 schools to the front of the line. The panel refused to endorse similar priority for 50,000 construction workers, along with separate proposals to prioritize immigration legal service workers, Pilates instructors, massage therapists and 270,000 uncertified caregivers that includes family members of medically vulnerable people.

The committee moved up less than 600 utility workers who must work indoors to "essential worker" status in phase 2.3, potentially giving them access to shots in early April with workers in agriculture, the U.S. Postal Service, the Idaho National Guard, manufacturing and public transit. That would be the end of priority group 2. The third priority group, with a currently undefined set of "other essential workers" and Idahoans age 16 and up with "high-risk medical conditions" can start getting shots in late April, according to the state's timeline.

All Idahoans age 16 and up should get shots by May. A vaccine has not yet been approved for children. About 120,000 people have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose in Idaho as of Friday morning, with just over 29,000 people reportedly receiving their booster shot as well. Nearly 150,000 vaccine doses have been administered in Idaho. Idaho receives 25,425 vaccine doses each week. The state has appeared slow to administer doses, but state leaders contend that's just an on-paper issue. Vaccine administration reporting can lag, which state leaders say inaccurately skews data. Idaho's immunization head, Sarah Leeds, said she recently notified members of the Biden Administration that Idaho was getting fewer doses than other states because its population is comprised of more children, for whom no vaccines are approved. Leeds said, "They say they're going to correct that."

"'I want you to call Jack and make sure he got his,'" Marler remembers telling her husband. Soon, she had her husband's 77-year-old friend set up for an appointment, too.

"I liked the other way because you kind of got to pick," she said Wednesday, after Eastern Idaho Public Health moved to a lottery to schedule seniors' vaccine appointments. Marler, who spends her days behind a screen crunching numbers, acknowledged it wasn't right for everyone.

In the old, first-come, first-serve system, Marler said, "you just got to be quick on a keyboard, and not everybody is." On the other hand, the lottery, she said, "makes it a more level playing field."

Seniors, doctors and health officials seem to be embracing Eastern Idaho Public Health's new lottery-style system in which the health district will take names from a list and pull them out of a proverbial hat to decide who gets shots when. They say approaching initial vaccine access through luck of the draw, rather than whoever gets through overwhelmed phone lines and web forms first, can ensure seniors with different levels of technological know-how get an equal chance.

"I think seniors are just frustrated to keep calling and get a (busy) signal. That's not a system," said Dr. Kenneth Krell, intensive care unit director at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. A lottery "might be a better system. … Who knows? We’ve never been through this before and had to deal with this," he said.

Dr. Martha Buitrago, a local infectious disease doctor, said it's promising that the health district changed its signup system so quickly.

"The fact that they did one thing and it didn't work out, and they switched, it means they're trying to" do the right thing, Buitrago said. "That's how we should do new things in unprecedented times."

What happened Saturday was "chaos" amid a "mad rush" to schedule vaccine appointments for seniors, health district Director Geri Rackow told reporters Wednesday morning. She apologized for the distress it left seniors who had trouble finishing the online form quickly.

Some seniors kept calling the health district throughout the day, hoping to get through, only to hear busy signals on the line before they learned all 2,000 shot appointments for the next two weeks filled up within 20 minutes of becoming available.

The process created confusion among people signing up online when appointments quickly disappeared. Rackow apologized for the rush that “quickly overwhelmed” the health district’s online appointment signup system.

Lucy Lemmon, 83, was calling all day. When the health district moved to a lottery system, she learned Wednesday that she was on the list. But she doesn't care about "this system." She just wants officials to "get it set up and let us old people and young people get (the vaccine) and get over with (it). ... I think it's awful we have to be up in the air about it all the time."

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