Forty-nine states have widened vaccine eligibility. Rhode Island is the holdout.
Delivering Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence in December. The state has moved more slowly than most others in inoculating its residents.
Delivering Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence in December. The state has moved more slowly than most others in inoculating its residents.Credit…David Goldman/Associated Press
Whether the threshold is 65 or 80, people who meet their state’s age requirement are eligible to get a Covid-19 vaccination shot in every U.S. state but one.
The exception: Rhode Island, the only state still in the first phase of its vaccination campaign, which restricts access to health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
If Barbara Diener, 65, had known she still wouldn’t be eligible for the vaccine in Rhode Island — where she and her husband moved to be closer to family — she said they might not have moved there in November from Georgia, where anyone 65 or older can get a shot.
“We moved here three months ago from Georgia, where everyone I know has been vaccinated,” said Ms. Diener, a travel agent. “We’re a little disappointed that the state of Rhode Island, being as small as it is, just can’t get it together.”
The state health director, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, said last week that Rhode Island was expanding eligibility slowly because the state wanted to make sure that the people most at risk were vaccinated first.
“In addition to how many people you vaccinate, who you vaccinate matters,” Dr. Alexander-Scott said. “And that’s what distinguishes Rhode Island, and how we are taking this thoughtful approach.”
Where older adults are eligible for vaccines
Most states have started vaccinating older adults, though the minimum eligibility age varies widely.
65+
70+
75+
80+
Not yet prioritizing by age
Ms. Diener and her husband both came down with Covid-19 last March, and her husband was hospitalized for two weeks. They want to get inoculated as soon as they can. But since neighboring states are limiting vaccinations to their own residents, they have little choice but to wait.
“My doctor is in Massachusetts, because we’re so close in proximity, but I can’t get it in Massachusetts either,” Ms. Diener said.
Rhode Island’s health department said last week that it was starting to vaccinate a small number of especially vulnerable people 75 and older — people who are part of a registry indicating that they need extra assistance during an emergency. In about two weeks, the department plans to start making doses available to everyone in that age group.
State residents ages 65 to 74 are forecast to become eligible at the end of the month, according to the health department’s projections.
Dr. Alexander-Scott said the state was being strategic because of its “very limited supply” of vaccine.
The state has administered about 54 percent of its available vaccine doses so far, and has given at least one of the two required shots to 6.5 percent of its population, a lower proportion than most other states.
— Lucy Tompkins The New York Times