Getting COVID-19 Vaccines to People With Disabilities and Chronic Illness
Since COVID-19 vaccines were first approved for emergency use in the United States, activists have urged Federal and state government authorities to create meaningful plans for vaccinating people with disabilities and chronic illness.
A March 1, 2021 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation highlights some of the shortcomings on this front since the December vaccine rollout. According to the reporters’ analysis, vaccination for people with physical and intellectual disabilities, especially those who live in group settings, has lagged far behind the vulnerabilities and needs this population experiences.
In addition, the report highlights some of the unaddressed challenges of ensuring that people with physical and intellectual disabilities get access to vaccinations. “The accessibility of community-based vaccine distribution sites also could affect the ability of people with disabilities to receive vaccines,” the reporters caution. “These considerations include factors such as whether sites are physically accessible for people with mobility impairments and whether reliable public or other transportation is available to get people to the site.”
The situation varies widely from state to state. Some states have not yet prioritized people with chronic illness and disabilities, even when those issues are directly relevant to higher risks of serious illness or death from COVID-19. In Wisconsin, for example, the state committee that set Wisconsin’s vaccine priority failed to follow CDC advice that says people age 16 to 64 with ‘underlying medical conditions which increase the risk of serious, life-threatening complications from COVID-19’ should be vaccinated at the same time as essential workers and people 65 and older,” according to a March 2 story in the Wisconsin State Journal.
In other states from Iowa to Massachusetts, health authorities are factoring chronic medical conditions into their vaccine priority scheduling. How does this translate into individual action at this point? It may be worth contacting your primary health provider to see whether they are making vaccines available to patients with certain chronic illnesses. Advocacy groups for individual illnesses are also a possible resource to find information on what is being done to support prioritized vaccine allocation to those most at risk.
It’s a difficult time, even with hope on the horizon. We need to do more to support vaccine access to particularly vulnerable people, both as a moral imperative and as a way of easing the overall burden on a strained healthcare system.
