California is opening coronavirus vaccination for more than 4 million residents with high-risk medical conditions and disabilities, allowing ages 16 to 64 to make appointments if they have different medical conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, kidney disease and severe obesity. .
While many have worked to document their illnesses, they could make an appointment as soon as possible, the California Department of Public Health said later this week that documentation is not necessary. To protect ‘confidentiality’, vaccination clinics will ask those with qualifying conditions to ‘sign a self-declaration that they meet the criteria for high-risk medical conditions or disabilities’ before receiving their shot.
For the record:
16:40, 13 March 2021A spokesman for San Diego, VA, told the Union Tribune that on March 4, the health care system would begin providing vaccine to all high-risk patients underlying medical conditions, but later said the actual date was March 10. This story has been corrected to reflect that Update.
Although San Diego County officials said Wednesday that special instructions specifying how to document health conditions would be at the end of the work week, a spokesman said Friday afternoon that the county’s approach is consistent with that of the state.
Vaccinations for people at high risk medical conditions or disabilities
Vaccination regulations, which take effect in California on March 15, state that people between the ages of 16 and 64 can be vaccinated if they have the following health conditions:
- Cancer, currently with a weakened immune system
- Chronic kidney disease, stage 4 or higher
- Chronic lung disease, dependent on oxygen
- Down syndrome
- Solid organ transplant, leading to a weakened immune system
- Pregnancy
- Sickle cell disease
- Heart disease, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease or cardiomyopathy (but not hypertension)
- Severe obesity (body mass index ≥ 40 kg / m2)
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus with a hemoglobin A1c level greater than 7.5%
Those who are at high risk for ‘serious life-threatening illnesses or deaths’, or for whom infection’ will limit the individual’s ability to receive ongoing care or services essential to their well-being or survival ‘, or for whom’ adequate and timely care for COVID will be particularly challenging due to the individual’s disability.
Officials said Friday that access to incoming doses for those who meet the vaccination requirements for disability and medical conditions is likely to have access to appointments through their regular medical providers who already have information about their conditions.
San Diego County’s largest health systems said this week that they are already preparing to proactively make contact with those whose records have now been approved for vaccination.
“I am very excited, I have been thinking a lot about moving on to the next phase”, said dr. Amy Sitapati, a primary care physician at UC San Diego Health, said. “It broke our hearts to watch and turn away people who are in a younger age group who are really at great risk, like my patient who has pulmonary fibrosis on oxygen.”
The change comes at a time when the demand for vaccine far exceeds the supply. And as with previous vaccine-eligible changes, the expansion raises new questions about how to identify, inform and prioritize people with any of the societies identified by the state and province.
Sitapati is part of the UCSD team that is struggling with these issues for the patients of the health system, of which about 50,000 to 80,000 fall into the categories that will soon be eligible. She helped set up a registry that is eligible for patients who identify and rank patients based on electronic patient records. From now until Monday, patients will receive email and text notifications stating that they are eligible for their chance, and will gradually receive invitation texts, phone calls or messages via UCSD’s MyChart patient portal for a vaccination for the to plan vaccination.
“We really know our patients better than anyone else,” Sitapati said. “When I go to a medical director or other doctor, they already know their best 1 percent, their top 5 percent of who is sick and who needs to be vaccinated.”
Within those at greatest risk of severe COVID-19, UCSD’s registry gives preference to patients living in areas that are socioeconomically disadvantaged, as measured by the state’s Healthy Places Index.
Several other health systems are also contacting patients or will be making contact soon. On Monday night, Scripps Health notified its more than 100,000 patients through the healthcare system’s own electronic system. Those patients have received a letter that they can take with them to the vaccines administered by the province to be eligible and will be invited from March 15 to schedule appointments through Scripps.
Among the first patients invited for appointments are those with cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or an organ transplant. Dr. Ghazala Sharieff, the medical head of the health system for clinical excellence and experience, warns that it will take time to go through this latest group.
“With a supply chain that is very unreliable, we will really frustrate people,” she said.
A Sharp HealthCare spokesman said the system plans to send its emails to its patients on Friday, and that they will be encouraged to schedule appointments at any of the Sharp-managed locations in the country – including the La Mesa in Chula Vista. vaccinations.
Kaiser Permanente also started reaching out to members with underlying health conditions last Friday. The supplier cares for 636,000 San Diegans, but a spokesman does not know how many of them will be eligible soon.
One local health system has already moved to the next group: the San Diego Veterans Administration. VA spokesman Christopher Menzie confirmed that the system vaccinates patients 45 years of age and older, as well as those with high-risk conditions defined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and pointed out that the system has 39,000 such patients. On March 10, the VA began offering vaccines to all patients with serious medical conditions and notified them via text messages, emails, phone calls and mailed letters.
The San Diego Union Tribune asked provincial spokesman Mike Workman to explain why the VA was able to start vaccinating patients who are not yet eligible in the rest of the region.
“They get direct vaccination and may be able to work through the levels faster,” Workman said in an email. “They do not get it through the state. They have a separate allocation system, just like the military. ‘
Those with severe underlying medical conditions already have a basic level of stress on vital organs and tissues, says Dr. Davey Smith, UCSD’s head of infectious disease research. This makes them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 complications.
But not all states weigh the different existing conditions equally, leading to a patchwork of policies, according to a New York Times survey.
Do you have type 1 diabetes? Then you can be vaccinated in Alaska and Iowa, but not in Idaho, and only in some cases in California. And although patients with cystic fibrosis are not eligible in the Golden State, they can get a coronavirus vaccine in Illinois and Montana, among others.
State-to-state eligibility gap could evaporate by May 1, which is when President Joe Biden plans to consider all Americans for vaccine. Meanwhile, new cases of coronavirus are still declining in the US, although it has been slower in recent weeks than in the first weeks of the new year.
This is a story in Spanish.