Until now, officials have avoided setting the dates for the rest of the startup, but are concentrating on shooting for the million people currently eligible: senior citizens, people with two or more chronic health conditions, and teachers and educators.
Two other large groups – according to the state – are expected to add about 360,000 workers in a range of essential industries and 430,000 people with one chronic health problem, before Massachusetts ends all restrictions and the appointment of vaccines to a final 2.55 million people in the general population older than 16 years.
The state’s vaccine website has long said the Baker government intends to open appointments to the general public at some point in April, ahead of the deadline for Biden. And officials noted that the state has generally followed the fitness schedule on the site, aside from some unexpected changes underway, such as adding educators to the mix.
Baker also stressed that the biggest question in opening vaccines for all adults is whether the federal government can significantly increase the supply of vaccines.
‘I welcome President Biden’s [May 1 deadline] “and doubling my call on the federal government to do everything in its power to increase vaccine production to meet the massive demand,” the governor said in a statement last week.
As the rate of vaccine management in Massachusetts has increased over the past month, experts said the state could leave others behind for a number of reasons to be eligible. There are demographic considerations, for example: states with older populations or larger health care staff may take longer to get through that pool.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said there could be a negative reason some states could be eligible more quickly: lower demand for the vaccine among the eligible population and more people who are not willing to prepare. or not able to be vaccinated.
“Some states have been able to move quickly because they are very hesitant, and many more people are not vaccinated,” Jha said. ‘Swing doors wide open. . . is not necessarily a sign that you are doing things well. ”
In Massachusetts, some older residents who are not yet eligible are worried that they will struggle to get an appointment when the general public is admitted because there will be so much competition. According to current state guidelines, a 64-year-old without any health conditions would be eligible at the same time as a 16-year-old, and it could actually be vaccinated to the person.
“Are they going to do some kind of scurrying, or are they going to see that we are very 64 years old and take so much from every age group?” asks Pam Cirincione of Wakefield, who at 64 is less than a year ashamed to be eligible.
Some states, including Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island, plan to become more eligible by increasing the minimum age before it is later opened to all, a maneuver that Maine Gov. Janet Mills said to better balance supply and demand.
The Baker administration said in early March that they would consider the idea, but declined to comment further.
The governor said Massachusetts has the ability to greatly increase the number of shots per day at different sites, but only with greater supply. Baker also called on the federal government to provide a long-term forecast of how many doses states will receive each week to help with planning and scheduling.
There are some signs that supply is increasing. The state received more than 170,000 new first doses from the federal government this week, an increase of nearly 9 percent from last week, threatened by 8,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that officials did not expect.
Over the past month, the state has received an average of about 168,000 first doses per week from the federal government, compared to about 102,750 in the previous four-week span, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Even more doses are delivered in the state and administered through federal programs at CVS pharmacies and community health centers.
And public health analysts widely expect the supply to go up in the coming weeks, and some will be eligible nationwide by May 1 as an easily achievable goal.
“May 1 is the standard in most, if not all, states,” said Josh Michaud, co-director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “In my opinion, this means that the federal government is very confident that there will be enough doses.”
Biden emphasizes that he does not expect anyone who wants to get a chance to be able to get one by May 1st. As the locks open and millions more people enter the system, it will probably take weeks to get appointments for everyone, even with a larger offer.
Massachusetts has already experienced what can happen if too many people flood the vaccine system. In February, when the state expanded the facility to all people over the age of 64 and with multiple health conditions, residents struggled for weeks to book appointments, and the state’s website initially crashed from all traffic. Some experts questioned whether Massachusetts and other states opened the admission too quickly at a time when demand so far exceeded supply.
‘If you need to include a warning statement [that scheduling will take weeks] at the beginning it indicates that they should have been a little more judicious, ‘said dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, said.
But changes have been made to the sign-up process in Massachusetts in recent weeks, especially with the introduction of a new pre-registration system that manages all demand and puts eligible residents in a digital queue.
While pre-registration does not solve demand and demand solutions, it can dispel a great deal of the anxiety in a scheduling process that has previously forced people to constantly check and refresh a website in desperate hope of an opening . Residents can now tune in to sit in line and be notified when a nearby appointment is available to book.
Anyone can pre-register, but only eligible residents will be placed in the queue on a first-come-first-served basis. The state says there will not be such a benefit for people who are not eligible. They would rather enter a queue on the date their population is eligible by the state, and will randomly get a place regardless of when they enrolled, officials said.
Adam Vaccaro can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @adamtvaccaro.