DUMMY FILE – MARCH 27 VACCINE STORY

Published 12:00 pm Friday, March 26, 2021

Oregon has again moved up the eligibility dates for COVID-19 vaccinations with some counties seeing all eligibility limits removed as early as May 36.

Gov. Kate Brown said Friday that frontline workers and people with underlying health conditions will now be eligible to get vaccinated April 5. That is almost  two weeks earlier than Brown announced last week when she moved the original May 1 date to April 19.

Brown said discussions with the Biden administration had given her confidence on its ability to deliver on its promise of a major increase in vaccine supply.

Eligibility does not mean availability. The state has fully vaccinated about 570,000 people since December. Estimates put the number of people aged 16 and over who can be inoculated at 3.5 million.

Oregon Health Authority officials told Brown that counties across the state had made enough progress on vaccinating people aged 65 and over to move onto new groups.

There are now 22 counties that have begun vaccinating Oregonians in Phase 1B, Group 6. It includes people aged 50 and over with underlying medical conditions that could lead to a severe illness or death from contracting COVID-19. The long list of groups also includes pregnant women aged 16 and above, seasonal and migrant workers, the homeless and others.

“With so many counties across Oregon ready to begin the next phases of vaccination, I am accelerating our vaccination timelines statewide rather than proceeding county-by-county,” Brown said.

Under Brown’s directive on Friday, vaccination will be available beginning Monday for Phase 1B, Group 7. 

Under a federal directive from the Department of Health and Human Services, Oregon and other states must scrap any eligibility limits for those aged 16 and over no later than May 1. The date was chosen by President Joe Biden and announced during his national address on March 11.

Oregon had planned a phased roll-out of vaccine that would not have allowed unrestricted eligibility until July 1. But the federal edict changed the timeline and compressed the period that vaccine could be targeted to specific groups to just 51 days between Biden’s March 11 announcement and the directive going into effect May 1.

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OHA Director Pat Allen said during a press call Friday that if all goes well, Oregon will consider moving the unrestricted eligibility for those aged 16 and over to April 26 — five days before the May 1 date.

The advanced timeline would not be statewide. Counties that submit a letter to the Oregon Health Authority by April 15 stating they are ready to handle the additional demand will be told by April 22 if they can lift all restrictions on April 26.

While mass vaccination centers will continue to be operated by county and state health authorities, Allen said federal supplies will increasingly go to pharmacies that are easier for most residents to visit. 

Allen said Oregon should have enough vaccine by June to be able to vaccinate everyone who wants a shot.

As the percentages rise, OHA is increasingly concerned with the number of people who are not seeking inoculation or are actively opposed to it.

In some parts of southwestern Oregon, Allen said less than 50% of seniors were indicating they wanted to be vaccinated. Some of those counties are among those with the highest infection rates as the rest of the state’s caseload drops.

If the state continues on its trend of lowering the infection rate and case totals statewide, more steps can be taken toward allowing ever larger events, said Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state’s top infectious disease expert.

Large outdoor events such as the Olympic Trials in Eugene in June and the Pendleton Round-Up in mid-September could be held with masking and hygiene safeguards. 

Sidelinger said the state hoped to send out guidance for major summer events by next month.

“We’re in a much better place” coming into the summer event season than last year, Sidelinger said.

An increase in infection rates or an outbreak of one of the new more contagious variants of the virus that are circulating in the nation could undercut progress.

The OHA team underscored that the best way to ensure that popular events and places can once again be safely enjoyed was to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

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Brown promised that the state will work to ensure that vaccine access for underrepresented communities.

“As we vaccinate our frontline workers and all Oregonians with underlying health conditions, we will work to make sure vaccines reach the communities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19: Oregon’s Black, Indigenous, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Tribal and communities of color,” Brown said.

Currently, most people are inoculated with two shots of either Moderna or Pfizer vaccine given a month apart. A third vaccine, a single-shot dose by Johnson & Johnson was recently approved.

Oregon Health Authority Director Pat Allen testified Wednesday that the state was receiving reports of manufacturing and delivery delays on the Johnson & Johnson doses. He told the House COVID-19 subcommittee that the new one-shot vaccine was a key part of reaching state and federal goals for inoculations.

Allen earlier this week signed an order activating Oregon’s use of a federal law that allows for a vast expansion of who can give vaccinations. There are now 30 different professional and student groups approved to inject people with vaccine. The law protects them from liability with the exception of “gross negligence.”

Brown said mobile health units and pop-up vaccine centers would increase the state’s ability to get shots into arms in more areas.

“Increased supplies, expanding eligibility will allow health care providers and community-based organizations to be more efficient in their efforts to vaccinate hard-to-reach communities,” she said.

Brown’s new directives came as the state reported a slight upswing in infection rates after a long decline since the peak levels around the end of last year.

But the state is maintaining its position among the five lowest states in the nation for cases and deaths per 100,000.

Sidelinger said Friday that the state had recorded 163,295 cases and 2,373 deaths.

The United States passed another milestone this week, with over 30 million cases since February 2020, resulting in 546,915.

Worldwide, there have been just under 125.7 million infections and over 2.75 million deaths