Elders are waiting for the vaccination: how will they know we are here?

While 84-year-old Barry Hoffman looks at the public introduction of the coronavirus vaccine, he just wants an acknowledgment that he exists.

Hoffman, from Cape Elizabeth, moved to Maine about a decade ago and left his longtime primary care physician in Boston. He only sees a heart specialist in Maine. And after nine months of social distance, staying home and playing safe, he is afraid he will be forgotten when it comes time for his vaccination.

My big question is, who knows about me? What do I do now? Just sit back and wait? Hoffman said last week. ‘I would like to admit that I exist, and then find out that I’m here and I’m waiting. I do not mind waiting, but I just want to make sure I do not fall through the cracks. ”

At present, Maine continues to follow federal guidelines that place Hoffman at Level 1B in the state’s vaccination plan. This plan includes people 75 years and older as a second group to receive vaccine doses, behind medical workers at the front and people living in community care facilities, such as nursing homes and nursing homes. In the 1B group are essential workers, including police officers, firefighters, employees of grocery stores and others.

While the state is considering increasing the order and introducing the elderly to essential workers, as some other states have preferred, Hoffman has to wait and wonder when and how he will get the vaccine.

“I tell my patients to be patient,” said Dr. James W. Jarvis, a family physician at Northern Maine’s Medical Center, Northern Maine, in Bangor, who is leading the COVID response of the nationwide health care network, told a team of several hundred. people, he said.

“A lot of people want to know where they’re on the list, but unfortunately there’s no list because grids are still in the air,” Jarvis said. “We know there will be a lot of good announcements about who or when they are going to get a vaccine.”

Jarvis suggested that the state could use a system based on birthdays or surnames to figure out how to vaccinate the population. But again, these decisions have not yet been made.

And with the delivery of vaccines and the rollout moving slower than expected, Hoffman and many of his peers are getting bad and with good reason. The estimates for the vaccination of 1B are creepy, and late January to February is probably a time frame. But for anyone over the age of 70 in Maine, the calculation of waiting is clear and frightening.

Of the 347 COVID-related deaths as of Thursday, 296 were people aged 70 or older, or 85 percent of the deaths here. If you include people 60 years and older, it’s an overwhelming 96 percent. A warning for these numbers is that many of them, about half of those who died, lived in the care environment.

Maine remains the oldest state in the country. Of the approximately 1.3 million inhabitants, 107,000 are 75 years and older. If you count people aged 65 and over, according to recent U.S. census estimates, that number is up to 260,000 people, or nearly 20 percent of the population.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that the first vaccines be given to seniors in community care and medical workers, so that the state’s healthcare system continues to have the capacity to treat COVID patients, along with anyone who becomes ill or injured. be due to other causes.

Maine’s public health officials say they are doing everything they can to organize the rollout as quickly as possible to reach older Mainers living at home. So far, the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has meticulously followed federal guidelines that put people 75 and older on the same footing as police officers and grocery store workers, and in front of their peers 65 to 75 years old – but even that edict is not not set in stone.

Other states, including Florida and Texas, preferred people 60 years and older to give preference, and in many counties in Florida, elderly people in wheelchairs, leaning on walkers and covered with blankets, waited for hours outside the vaccinations trying to get their first dose.

Details about the rollout to older Mainers are still being worked out, but the Maine CDC recently said that the state is likely to rely on primary care physicians or other medical professionals to notify their older patients when they are eligible. These details will be announced by the state’s news media in the coming weeks.

The wait for clear guidance has done nothing to calm the nerves of people like Jacqueline Lessard, who is 74 years and three months old, which means she will have to wait even longer to get a vaccine if current standards apply. . Lessard usually spends winters in Florida – if she were there now, she could be one of the thousands of elderly people standing in line.

But in late October, Lessard decided to stay in Maine and moved in full-time with her 99-year-old mother in Augusta to help her through the winter. Her mother’s doctor said COVID almost 99 is a death sentence at 99. This puts even more pressure on Lessard to limit her risks of getting sick, and ensures she and her mother get the vaccine as soon as possible.

“I know it’s very difficult to go about this (to decide) who’s going to have it and who’s not going to have it,” Lessard said. ‘I fully understand (that) responders and medical people should be first in line. I used to work on a rescue, I understand. When I hear that … cashiers are going to get it in front of seniors, it leaves me emotionally drained. ‘

Lessard has been trying for days to get answers on what the plan is going to be, she said, and she tries every chance to put pressure on officials, no matter how small. She first called a local aging agency, then the Maine CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services. She tried to get the phone number of dr. To track down Nirav Shah, the director of Maine CDC, to vent her frustration.

When a reporter told her it was the federal CDC that decided how many doses would be distributed to each state, Lessard did not miss a ride. “Do you have a number for them?”

Armand Bouchard, 81, and his wife, Anne, 80, said they want better communication from health officials about what they know and what they do not know about who will be vaccinated and when.

“Will someone call me one day and say, ‘Hey, your name just came, be at this place tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock’?” Armand Bouchard said. ‘Maybe they are not at this stage, but if that is not the case then they need to say so. We would at least know that. And if it turns out that they only get nothing in March, then I write it on my calendar in March with a question mark. ‘

The Bouchards, of Harpswell, said they had received a notification from their provider, Martin’s Point Health Care, that they would be notified when the vaccine became available. But it’s just a slight consolation, he said, because ‘I do not know how much information they actually have.’

Geriatrics and GPs say they hear the same questions over and over, but they still have few good answers.

In general, older people have a positive view of health care and of vaccines. They are accustomed to taking medications and vaccines, including those given mostly to older adults for diseases such as pneumonia, shingles, and the annual flu variant. They are also less likely to spend time on Facebook than people in their 50s and 60s, many of whom use unfounded internet conspiracy theories that undermine confidence in vaccines, says Dr. Cliff Singer, Head of Geriatric Mental Health and Neuropsychiatry at Northern Light Health. and president of the Dirigo Maine Geriatrics Society, a group of 78 geriatric practitioners and gerontologists.

“They grew up when polio was a problem,” Singer said. “They grew up and saw childhood diseases decrease due to healthy vaccination rates.”

Singer said he understands the argument for vaccinating the elderly first, but agrees with the state’s priority plan.

“This is, of course, an area rich in ethical debates,” Singer said. ‘But you need essential workers to look after older adults. I think the Maine CDC has the right of priority. ”

He added that older adults will be vaccinated in the near future, but that they do not have as great a risk as people who are in a “care environment or people who care in those institutions”.

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