Oregon’s top health official said Wednesday the state will comply with a federal order and all residents aged 16 and older will be eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on May 1.
Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, made this commitment on Wednesday during an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.
Allen’s remarks come six days after President Biden’s announcement that all states will have enough vaccine supplies to be eligible for all residents by May 1, two months earlier than Oregon had previously planned.
Oregon was reluctant to commit to the timeline last week, while Gov. Kate Brown and Allen said Friday they want to see doses arrive before committing.
Less than a week later, Allen said the state still has no clarity on whether he will receive enough vaccines in the coming weeks to meet Biden’s accelerated schedule, fueled by the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine available in the nation.
Allen told OPB’s Dave Miller that the state had received an order from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set up vaccination sites to meet the new timeline.
“We will comply with that order and on May 1 all Oregonians will be eligible,” Allen said.
Allen said Oregon is a little nervous about committing to the new timeline because it is not certain he will receive the appropriate doses of vaccine needed by May 1 to close the locks for hundreds of thousands of additional Oregonians. to open. Oregon previously made a promise to vaccinate seniors in January, but had to backtrack when the expected doses from the Trump administration never showed up.
Oregon is still vaccinating the elderly and the next group of residents – 45 years and older with underlying conditions and certain frontline workers in the agricultural and food processing industry – will not be eligible until March 29.
Officials planned to extend the fitness on May 1 to people with underlying conditions aged 16 to 44, as well as a long list of frontline workers, including grocery store employees, restaurant and bar staff, shopkeepers, bus drivers, construction workers and government officials. Under the original timeline, everyone would have been eligible on July 1st.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday issued a two-page directive setting out the requirement for eligible 16-year-olds on May 1st.
Norris Cochran, the acting secretary of the federal agency, wrote that restricting vaccine administration to high-risk and priority groups made sense in the first months after doses became available in December.
“However, given the significant increase in the supply of vaccines,” Cochran wrote, “it is appropriate to go beyond priority groups.”
Exactly what the significant increase in vaccine supplies means for Oregon is not yet clear.
States usually have a three-week window through the federal website for vaccine distribution, where they can look ahead and see how many doses are coming. Allen said the necessary doses have not yet appeared in the three-week window, making him nervous.
“To be honest,” he told OPB, “this administration has usually done pretty well to ensure that it has assured us that we could see doses.”
Oregon is still a few weeks away from what Allen said would be a good problem – where the unsaturated demand for vaccines makes way for a quantity of doses available across the country at offices, pharmacies and mass clinics in populated areas. To date, about one in five Oregonians has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Meanwhile, the state health authority expects vaccine hesitation to remain a problem in some parts of the state, and Allen says there is a real patchwork in Oregon when it comes to people who want to be vaccinated.
Erica Heartquist, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Health Authority, said Biden’s government had informed governors earlier this week of its extensive eligibility, calling it ‘welcome news’ that vaccine production would meet national demand for all. adults by 1 May.
Heartquist said officials will keep their promise to ensure equitable access to vaccines under the new timeline, and to find ways to prioritize risk groups – even if it means doing so after everyone is eligible.
‘We will continue to focus on fairness in all our vaccine efforts, whether it means ensuring that the elderly, people with underlying conditions, frontline workers and Oregonians who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 have the opportunity to vaccinations before 1 May – or after 1 May, together with local health partners to ensure that these priority groups still have access to appointments, ”she said in a statement.
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that Oregon is committed to enrolling all residents 16 and older, not 18 and older. President Biden has previously stated that all people aged 18 and over are eligible
– Andrew Theen; [email protected]; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen