Tens of thousands of people in the Portland region who are already eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine could wait weeks – if not months – to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, public health officials said on Tuesday, with one failure described as a very dark, low day ”for the region.
The recognition comes a day before vaccinations begin en masse for educators at the Oregon Convention Center, underscoring the widespread and deepening access problems among the limited number of groups authorized to be vaccinated.
Although Oregon began offering vaccinations to many doctors, nurses and other front-line workers in December, health workers who are not affiliated with one of the five largest health giants in the Portland region had trouble planning vaccinations.
Now the workers who are already able to get a vaccine are likely to be jumped by educators who qualified Monday under pressure from Gov. Kate Brown to reopen classrooms for personal learning.
The metro region expects 15,000 vaccines to be injected into people’s arms this week – and 12,000 of them were earmarked for educators, leaving only 3,000 doses for those in phase 1A to be vaccinated in front of teachers, officials said. The number of health workers skipped – including professionals in private practice or those who, among others, help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities – who need to receive vaccinations in the short term are ‘very limited.’
“This is an incredibly frustrating situation,” Jessica Guernsey, director of public health in Multnomah County, said at the start of a news conference on Tuesday. “I’m sorry for the trouble it caused.”
Public health officials said the primary challenge is that too many Oregon residents are now seeking vaccinations amid a limited amount of vaccine. This is the same warning that Oregon’s hospital trade group issued last week, saying Brown’s plan to qualify teachers and seniors would set unreasonable expectations and lead to confusion.
The confusion is now coming into sharper focus, especially as some central Oregon and coastal landscapes have unexpectedly continued to vaccinate seniors ahead of schedule, despite challenges in the metro area to vaccinate health workers.
Government officials initially identified 400,000 to 500,000 Phase 1A workers who would be eligible for the vaccine. But Oregon has so far reported only 325,473 doses out of 589,200 receptions. And now another 152,000 teachers, daycare and preschool workers are eligible for shots.
Health officials said Tuesday that they are unlikely to use all doses on hand to address the shortage, as the doses are set aside as second shots for those awaiting their final doses.
The delay for thousands of potentially vulnerable workers in the state’s populated region is the latest obstacle in the unprecedented explosion of vaccines. Despite Oregon’s relative success with COVID-19, the governor came under fire for scientifically manipulating and ignoring the federal leadership to prioritize teachers over older Oregonians who were likely to be hospitalized or infected. die.
Tuesday’s news conference took place exactly one hour after employees in the state’s largest school district – Portland Public – were able to start making appointments at the newly established mass vaccination clinic in the Oregon Convention Center. But in many ways, it was weeks in the making.
To address vaccine access issues for workers not affiliated with hospitals, the provinces of Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas and Columbia on January 12 invited health workers to conduct a survey with the goal of arranging vaccine appointments.
More than 60,000 people responded. Only about 11,000 people were able to plan appointments, officials said and it is not clear how many of them were vaccinated.
KGW-TV only reported the problems on Monday, including tens of thousands of people who are interested and eligible to get a vaccine that effectively sits in limbo.
The local health leaders acknowledged broad challenges and announced on Tuesday that they were halting the survey and redirecting thousands of health workers and other Phase 1A members to the new one-stop shop for scheduling appointments.
But the new scheduling system has its own challenges. For example, it could be a maximum of 1,000 people at a time, which means that people who want to make an appointment ‘may have to try a few times,’ Multnomah County officials said in a statement. “Once the appointments for the week are full, they should try again next week.”
Public health officials have warned that just because someone is now eligible for the vaccine does not mean they will get an appointment or a short chance – especially with teachers now eligible and elderly people entering phases get, with the 80 and from 8 February.
Dr. Christina Baumann, director of public health in Washington County, said leaders try to be transparent. “We know that people have received the message that they are eligible now or in the next few weeks, but that does not mean we will have vaccines on hand,” she said.
Baumann calls the ‘extremely challenging’ situation that he has to plan several weeks, but does not know how much vaccine is available as a major obstacle. Projections by the Oregon Health Authority show that the state should receive about 100,000 first and second doses per week until February.
Meanwhile, the crisis in the Portland region is coming as several counties are already a few weeks ahead of Brown’s own vaccination guidelines for the elderly.
On Monday, health officials in Deschutes County announced they would vaccinate people 75 and older. The invitation is also open to residents of Crook and Jefferson counties. Last week, Lincoln County announced that it has “additional vaccine” on the way and could also plan people 75 years and older.
Public health leaders in the metro region are discussing the contradictions with state leaders, including the possibility of re-allocating doses to Portland.
In response to a question about the possibility, Oregon Health Authority officials said the Portland region received “nearly 48% of all vaccines sent” to the state, “enough to cover nearly 10% of its total population. . “
Across the world, nearly three-quarters of the 400,000 eligible people in Phase 1A will have received at least the first dose in the next few days, spokesman Jonathan Modie said in an email. ‘But we know that there are still many populations that are difficult to reach, and we will work with the three provinces to provide additional vaccine. “There was just not enough federal supplies that Oregon received to vaccinate all Phase 1a populations across the state,” he said.
Additional doses should go to ‘those essential workers who serve our immigrant, refugee, traditional health workers in colored communities’, Medicaid and Medicare and home health workers said.
Metro leaders like Guernsey said the Portland area is not the same as the rest of the state, and that it may be necessary to use vaccines for other provinces. In effect, she suggested, the allocations might have to shift ‘to meet the population and the complexity.’
Dr. Jennifer Vines, a public health officer in the province, said the addition of teachers to the Oregon-mix is ”” the situation is worse because they do not have to vaccinate everyone in Phase 1A yet.
“Today is a very dark, low day for us,” she added.
Vines said her biggest hope is that more doses of vaccine will start rolling in soon. President Biden and his health team have made vaccine distribution a top priority.
Until Oregon and the country see the spread of vaccines increase, the problems could worsen for the rest of the population.
“We have no answers,” Vines said of the issue facing Phase 1A health workers in particular. “But we work very hard, nights and weekends to find out.”
– Andrew Theen; [email protected]; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen