Jean Andrade, an 88-year-old living alone, has been waiting for her COVID-19 vaccine since she was eligible under state guidelines almost a month ago. She assumed her caseworker would contact her to get one, especially after she got stuck in an electric recliner for nearly two days during a recent power outage.
Only after seeing a TV news report about the competition for the limited supply of shots in Portland, Oregon, did she realize no one was planning her dose. A grocery delivery service for homemade seniors eventually provided a pamphlet with vaccination information, and Andrade had a helper who had to come there four hours a week to ask to make an appointment with her.
“I thought it would be a priority when you were 88 years old and that someone would let me know about it,” said Andrade, who has lived in the same house for 40 years and can not help any family members. “You ask someone else who is 88, 89 and has no one to help them. Ask them what to do. Well, I still have my brain, thank God. But I’m very angry.”
Older adults have the highest priority in vaccinating COVID-19, and the hundreds of thousands of them spend hours online asking for their children’s help and travel hours to remote pharmacies in a desperate attempt to obtain a COVID-19. vaccine. But an unparalleled number like Andrade are left unseen because they are too overwhelmed, weakened or too poor to take care of themselves.
FILE – In this photo, 5 February 2021, dr. Ingrid Felix-Peralta, right, and her husband, dr. Victor Peralta, second from right farewell to Roque Peralta, left, and Crila Rodriguez Peralta, middle, (no relationship) after Roque and Crila received their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in New York. (AP Photo / Seth Wenig)
The urgency to reach this vulnerable population before the country’s focus shifts elsewhere increases as more Americans of other ages and priority groups become eligible for vaccinations. As the clock ticks and many states extend shots to people as young as 55, nonprofits, churches and advocacy groups are scrambling to find isolated elders and have them vaccinated before entering an even larger pool. must compete – and if they forget about vaccination, they move on to campaigns.
An extreme imbalance between the demand and vaccination of vaccines in almost every part of the United States makes a gamble to secure a shot. In Oregon, Andrade competes with as many as 750,000 residents aged 65 and over, and the demand is so great that the appointments for the weekly dose allocation in Portland are tracked down in less than an hour. On Monday, the city’s flooded vaccination information turned off at 9 a.m., and online booking sites crashed.
Amid such madness, the explosion of vaccines here and elsewhere has greatly benefited healthier seniors with resources “that can jump in their car at any moment and drive for two hours”, while overlooking more vulnerable older adults, James Stowe , the director of aging and adult services for an association of city and state governments in the Kansas City neighborhood.
“Why was it not the core of our efforts, the core of what we wanted to do? Why did this group not include it from the start?” he said of the most vulnerable elderly.
Some older adults who have not yet received vaccinations are so disconnected that they do not even know they are eligible. Others realize they qualify, but without internet service and often email accounts, they do not know how to make an appointment and can not reach it anyway – so they did not try.
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Still others have debilitating health issues that make leaving home an insurmountable task, or they are so afraid of exposure to COVID-19 that they would rather not be vaccinated than venture out in public to get a chance.
Pat Brown waits outside the Don Bosco Senior Center in Kansas City, Ma, on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. (AP Photo / Orlin Wagner)
In Kansas City, Missouri, 75-year-old Pat Brown knows she needs the vaccine because her asthma and diabetes put her at higher risk for serious COVID-19 complications. But Brown did not try to plan an appointment and did not even know if they were still being offered in her area; she says she is too overwhelmed.
“I do not have a car, and it is difficult for me to get around in places. I just do not like going to clinics and have to wait because you have to wait so long,” Brown said, adding that its in constant pain due to spinal arthritis. “I could not do it. My back would give … and I do not have the money to take a taxi.”
The pandemic also closed senior centers, libraries and churches – all places where older Americans can stay visible in their communities and get information about the vaccine. And some public health departments initially relied on mass emails and text messages to let residents know they were eligible, missing large chunks of the older population.
“Do you think everyone has internet access? Do you really think everyone has email?” Denise LaBuda, spokeswoman for the Council on Aging of Central Oregon, said. “We just do not know where they all are. They have to raise their hand – and how do they raise their hand?”
To address access differences, Biden’s government said on Wednesday it would work with health insurance companies to help vulnerable elderly people be vaccinated for COVID-19. The goal is to get 2 million of the most endangered elderly vaccinated soon, Coronavirus special adviser Andy Slavitt said in the White House.
Slavitt says insurers will use their networks to contact Medicare recipients with information about COVID-19 vaccines, answer questions, find first- and second-dose appointments, and plan and coordinate transportation. The focus will be on reaching people in medically underserved areas.
Nonprofits, churches, and advocates for the elderly have spent weeks figuring out how to reach disadvantaged Americans over the age of 65 through patchwork and grassroots efforts that are vastly different.
FILE – On this March 3, 2021, the file photo, in this Loida Mendez (86), receives the first dose of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from the US Army Luis Perez, at a FEMA vaccination site at Miami Dade College in North Miami, Fla. (AP Photo / Marta Lavandier, File)
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Some work with charities such as Meals on Wheels to disseminate information about vaccines or grocery delivery programs, such as those warned by Andrade. Others are mine library card lists, senior center membership lists, and voter registration databases to find disconnected older people.
It is most important to reach out through organizations and faith groups that have marginalized older Americans, says Margaret Scharle, who developed a vaccination trait tool for her Roman Catholic congregation in Oregon. The ‘low-tech’ approach, which other charities have started using, is based on door-knocking, paper brochures and calls to communicate with residents over 65.
“Once you’ve been blocked so many times from making an appointment, you can give up. So we work as hard as we can to penetrate the most marginalized communities, to activate networks that already exist,” Scharle said. which after the initial contact provides assistance with planning appointments and transportation.
In Georgetown, South Carolina, a rural community where many of the 10,000 residents are descendants of slaves, the local chapter of the NAACP has been using its roles since an election in November to get the oldest citizens for the vaccine. Chapter President Marvin Neal said they were trying to reach 2,700 people to let them know they were eligible for a shot and to offer help booking appointments.
Many of the people do not have internet service or transportation, or suffer from medical problems such as dementia, he said.
“Some do not even know that the vaccine is even in their community, that’s the challenge,” Neal said. “It’s like they’re just throwing their hands up in the air and hoping someone can step in. Because everyone I’d talked to wants the vaccine. I’ve not had one yet that says, ‘Sign me up.’
Senior citizen Barbara Bender answers the door for Nancy Murphy of Store to Door employee in Portland, Ore. While delivering an order of groceries to the non-profit organization on February 25, 2021. (AP Photo / Gillian Flaccus)
Outreach workers are also identifying holes in the system that prevent the most vulnerable elderly from accessing shots. For example, a drive-in service in a rural part of Oregon does not bring passengers outside their town limits, which means they cannot get to their province’s mass vaccination site. In the same region, only the largest city has a public bus system.
Such obstacles underscore what the outreach workers say is a huge demand for mobile vaccination clinics. Some local governments and non-profit organizations work with paramedics and volunteer groups specializing in disaster response to vaccinate the hard-to-reach elderly.
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In South Carolina, pharmacist Raymond Paschal bought a $ 3,000 van and refrigerator to start a mobile clinic for underserved areas, but his independent pharmacy in Georgetown gets no vaccine.
“There are a lot of people falling through the cracks,” Paschal said. “These older people who have not yet received their vaccine, they will have all this younger generation that they have to compete with. So we have to get to these older people first.”