MADISON, Wis. Of the twenty conditions that would make someone part of the next large group eligible for a vaccine in Wisconsin, there is one that gets a lot of attention: body mass index.
Anyone 16 years and older with a BMI of 25 or higher will be eligible on March 29th. About 2 million Wisconsinites will then be eligible, including people with conditions such as asthma, cancer and Down syndrome.
Studies show that obesity does contribute to a worse response to the coronavirus. The CDC says that obesity can triple the risk of hospitalization, and as your BMI increases, you also increase the risk of COVID.
But just as there are different degrees of asthma or diabetes, there are different degrees of overweight. Someone with a BMI of 25 may look thin and healthy.
“The Green Bay Packers are probably all eligible for the 1C group,” said Dr. Matt Anderson of UW Health said. ‘Because muscle mass naturally contributes. You may have BMIs that are elevated for people who may not have the same risk levels. ‘
The fact that a young, muscular athlete is eligible the same day as cancer patients and others with serious health conditions leaves it to the inmates to determine who gets it first.
DHS has given some ideas on how pharmacies, public health departments and health systems can do this.
‘Like prioritizing people with two or three high-risk conditions. Or maybe start with younger adults who are 50-64 years old with one high-risk condition, then you go to the younger age group, ”said Mo Kharbat, SSM Health Wisconsin’s director of pharmacy services.
Kharbat said SSM Health has not yet decided how they will prioritize the next group. UW Health has not either.
But dr. Anderson said the process is likely to include patients having to identify themselves as qualifying.
‘It’s incredibly challenging to determine who these people are. How do we identify them? And we will depend on them to help us identify who they are. “If we try to accept all the responsibilities of ours, we will miss people,” Anderson said.
He said deciding who gets a chance before who is going to be challenging, gray and messy.
“It’s not going to be perfect, either. And it’s really hard. How do you distinguish between someone who has cancer and someone who is immunosuppressed for condition 1, 2 or 3? How do you do that to someone with COPD? Or chronic heart failure? “There are going to be a huge, huge number of people who have such conditions,” Anderson said.
It is possible that we will see that someone who is young, a little overweight, but otherwise relatively healthy, gets a chance before someone with a serious, chronic health condition suffers.
Anderson encourages young and healthy people to be patient and allow those at greater risk to get the vaccine first.
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