Younger Californians get COVID-19 vaccine, 90-year-olds wait

At 91, Bob Stannard still lives on his own in his Gilroy farm and reads the newspaper religiously from his lounge chair every morning, but his body does not work quite as well as it used to.

Stannard has stage 4 prostate cancer. He is also diabetic, relies on a catheter and uses a walker to get short distances around the house. Amid several traumatic falls over the past two years and his string of medical conditions, Stannard – a member of Kaiser Permanente for the past five decades – visits the hospital and his doctors more than most.

Although thousands of people in the state younger than Stannard have succeeded in getting a vaccine against COVID-19 in the past week, Stannard’s family is succeeding.

“Surprisingly, Kaiser has all this information, and we still can’t get any response from anyone,” said Dan Morgan, Stannard’s son-in-law. ‘The selection process reminds me of a bingo game. I just do not understand how they come up with this. ”

When Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that the state would allow vaccinations for 65-year-olds and older, Kaiser followed suit. But opening the floodgates of health workers to hundreds of thousands of other people was chaotic. Telephone lines got stuck and online dating systems quickly overloaded with appointment requests.

On Tuesday – just a week after starting appointments for 65-year-olds and older – Kaiser announced that he was now restricting vaccinations to people aged 75 and older. Today, even those who qualify under the new parameters can no longer call, email or use the healthcare provider’s online system to make an appointment. Kaiser essentially said that they should not call us, we will call you.

Kaiser is not alone. Provincial health departments and health care providers across the country all say that the long-awaited vaccination by the vaccine is hampered by a low and inconsistent amount of doses.

As a result, despite caring for 1.5 million members aged 65 and older, Kaiser said last week that he had received only 20,000 doses for the age group.

Dorothy Wickenhiser (71) of Livermore was one of the lucky ones.

She waited eight hours on Kaiser’s phone line last week before finally hearing the voice of a receptionist on the other end – at 2am.

After Wickenhiser had been living in fear since March that she and her husband – who died of lung disease this summer – could contract the virus, Wickenhiser said she was given the chance to get a vaccine as soon as she heard she was eligible .

Wickenhiser said she was unaware of the changes Kaiser had made since then, and that she was “very happy” to plan an appointment in a week.

“They said they were worried about people not wanting the chance, but I can tell you that I do not know that one person in my age group does not think about this,” she said. “… I’m just keeping my fingers crossed now that they are not going to call and cancel.”

In a statement to this news organization, Kaiser said he “follows state guidelines and prioritizes patients at increased risk for mortality or other serious illnesses, as well as those living in vulnerable communities.”

But relatives of some of California’s oldest residents who are most vulnerable to succumbing to COVID-19 say they do not see the policy at work.

Mark Rakich’s 90-year-old mother, Carol, fell badly in her home in Los Gatos two weeks ago and broke her shoulder. The doctors recommended that she spend her 6- to 8-week recovery in a competent nursing home, but due to COVID-19 outbreaks at nursing homes across the country, Mark Rakich and his family decided to bring her home instead and to look at her herself.

Carol Rakich’s family now wants a home caregiver to assist her, but the risk of bringing in another person who could possibly transmit the disease is heavy on them.

Like Stannard’s family, the Rakiches tried everything to get Carol a vaccine appointment – from emailing her doctors to take her to any facility in the Bay to supervisors at Kaiser’s member services department – without any happiness.

“I do not know what to make of it,” Mark Rakich said. “This is a unique patient with unique circumstances.”

Rakich, whose close 65-year-old friend recently received his first dose of vaccine, calls it ‘shocking’ that there is no way to take someone who is at such a high risk as his mother vaccinated in front of other less critical patients.

“I’m not asking to jump in the front row. “I ask that a 90-year-old woman with diabetes, kidney and heart problems who needs help to go to the bathroom be placed on the list before a healthy 65-year-old,” he said.