Health officials in the state of Indiana allow smokers to work on the COVID-19 waiting lists for vaccines on teachers, which angers professionals in schools.
“According to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]”Smokers and people who are severely obese are at higher risk for serious illnesses or deaths and could therefore be considered for an assistance list,” a spokeswoman for the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) said in an email. told WISH-TV in response to the move. “We follow the CDC’s recommendations.”
In Indiana provinces, everyone will be responsible for deciding whether smokers should be allowed on the vaccination waiting lists, and that does not mean that if someone is a smoker, they can simply schedule an appointment for a vaccination online. The state still only administers its doses to important age groups, health workers and first responders.
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But the move by the state has an impact on who is able to sign up for vaccine assistance lists to receive remaining doses – and Indiana tightened control over vaccine assistance lists over the course of the month. In a Jan. 30 letter to vaccination sites, Indiana’s medical chief, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, ordered that vaccination sites should be canceled and notify someone who was wrongly informed that they qualified and came on a waiting list.
This has had a number of impacts on Indiana teachers, who have enrolled them on a waiting list to receive unused vaccines and avoid wastage, WFYI reports. Because teachers are not officially eligible for vaccinations in Indiana, a number of teachers have recently been removed from the assistance lists. The ISDH said that these teachers have been removed from the list because their occupational category is not officially considered a state priority group, and therefore they are unable to receive shots. Only teachers older than 60 will qualify.
Now that smokers have been given priority status ahead of them on the assistance lists, teachers are even more upset, especially as schools want to reopen as soon as possible.
“We find it extremely frustrating that the Indiana Department of Health continues to rely on the CDC recommendations, while it very clearly states that educators now need to be vaccinated,” said Jennifer Smith-Margraf, vice president of the Indiana State Teachers Association. told WISH-TV.
According to the guidelines of 19 February, the CDC classifies teachers, support staff and day care workers as ‘essential workers’. Indiana has not yet followed suit.
The ISDH also denies a statement that it wasted any vaccines by removing teachers from the assistance lists: ‘We ask every clinic to keep an assistance list of people who meet the current admission requirements so that every dose can be administered, and one hundredth of the doses we received were wasted, mainly due to a vial or syringe breaking. ‘
The scientific community has agreed on evidence that smokers are a priority group for protection against COVID-19. Regular smoking is associated with a high risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, according to a study at the Cleveland Clinic published in January in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal. Another study published by the University of California, Los Angeles in November found that COVID-19 is exacerbated in the airways of smokers. Other researchers have found that smoking can weaken the body’s immune system and increase the risk that a patient will need a lung transplant if he or she is seriously ill. USA Today report.
Newsweek contacted the ISDH for comment on its updated vaccination waiting lists.