Residents 65 and older to become vaccine eligible
Photo | Matt Stone | Boston Herald | Pool
Gov. Charlie Baker stood alongside a timetable of estimated COVID-19 vaccine distribution at a news conference in December.
People age 65 and older, residents and staff of low-income and affordable senior housing, and individuals with two or more health conditions that put them at higher risk from COVID-19 will be able to start booking vaccine appointments Thursday, as the state shifts to the next priority group in its phased immunization plan.
The expansion of eligibility to a population of roughly 1 million new people comes as the Baker administration is also pursuing what officials describe as a streamlining of its vaccination program to focus on high-capacity sites.
The administration sent a letter Wednesday to local boards of health informing them that starting March 1 the state will no longer provide first doses to municipalities running individual vaccine clinics that only serve their own residents. The 68 current municipal clinics will receive second doses so that they can fully vaccinate people who have gotten the first shot, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said in a briefing.
Twenty communities the Baker administration identified on Tuesday as disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 will remain eligible to receive and distribute vaccine at the local level, Sudders said.
The goal, Sudders said, is to increase capacity at locations like mass vaccination sites, regional collaboratives and pharmacies, and to have a uniform set of rules across the different sites, rather than have some only serving residents of a particular community.
Ninety-five percent of people in Massachusetts live within a 45-minute drive of a mass vaccination site or within 30 minutes of one of 13 regional collaboratives, Sudders said. Critics of the vaccine distribution effort in Massachusetts have raised concerns about how people will access the large-scale vaccine sites if they cannot drive or do not have someone to transport them.
The companion policy that allows otherwise-ineligible people to get their shot if they accompany someone age 75 and older to a mass vaccination site will continue to apply only for that age group.
More than 50 percent of the 75-plus population has so far been vaccinated, Sudders said, a threshold that made state officials comfortable adding new eligibility groups.
Because of supply constraints, it could take more than a month for all eligible groups to secure a vaccine appointment, Sudders said. She said the state received word late Tuesday night that its supply from the federal government would increase to 139,000 first doses a week, from about 110,000 first doses.
Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Sudders plan to provide vaccine updates at a noon press conference, which will be livestreamed.
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