The rest of the youngest age group – 16- to 29-year-olds – will be able to register for the vaccine on Monday at 06:00. Government Phil Scott said the move would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to make sure they can register for a Pfizer vaccine, which is the only option for people in their age group.
“I wanted to give them a bit of an edge to make sure all the appointments weren’t done by the time they got the chance to sign up,” Scott said.
The 16- and 17-year-olds will also need permission from their parent or guardian to get the vaccine, Smith said. The registration process contains a form on the website on which parents can confirm their consent.
Eighteen-year-olds are eligible to take the Moderna or the currently discontinued Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but Scott said officials want the group to have the chance to celebrate the milestones in their lives.
“We still hope that they have had to give up over the past year, that everyone will have some empathy for them and that they can get a normal graduation,” Scott said.
The state also hopes to expand in-person tuition in schools in April, but Scott said the decision is more about graduation ceremonies than the expansion.
Anne Sosin, co-policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, said in a message that she would like to see young people vaccinated, but that she wants these decisions on early access to be guided by considerations on public health.
‘To be clear on this, I know 16-18 year olds can only get Pfizer; “However, I am concerned that the government has said that they have decided to give a good end to the year,” she wrote.
People registering for the vaccine on Monday will only be able to sign up for Pfizer or Moderna appointments due to the break in Johnson & Johnson, said Mike Smith, secretary of the human services agency.
The Federal Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a break in the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Administration on April 13 in response to the development of news about a rare blood clotting disorder in six of the 6.8 million doses that has been published so far.
Appointments for Johnson & Johnson have been canceled until April 23, and people who are registered must be contacted by the state in the coming days, Smith said. Everyone whose appointments have been canceled should be able to get another appointment by the end of April.
About 390 appointments for Johnson & Johnson after the date are still in the system. Smith said at this point, officials do not expect the break to cause a delay in the state’s reopening schedule.
Officials reiterated support for the decision to discontinue the vaccine, saying it would give experts more time to review the new information and make recommendations to providers for treating patients with the disease.
“The medical community and the public health community in general felt that we needed that extra time to get more information so that we could not really do harm,” said Health Commissioner Mark Levine. “And if the vaccine, even though it is a very close focus of people in the country, is harmed, we need to clearly identify it and understand it before we go any further.”
About 51% of the population of 16 and older in Vermont received at least one dose of the vaccine, and according to data from the Department of Health, 34% were fully vaccinated.
Smith said the gap between people of color and white Vermonters has narrowed, and the gap between the single-dose vaccination rate of the population has narrowed from 13 percentage points to 8.9 percentage points.
But the gap remains, especially for people 65 and older: 81.1% of non-Hispanic white Vermonters 65 and older received at least one dose, compared to 73% of people of color 65 and older.
The state reported 141 cases on Friday, consistent with the various numbers over the past week. Twenty-six people are currently hospitalized with the virus, including three in the ICU. The state reported 242 total deaths due to Covid-.
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