Can you get the updated COVID shot in your state?
Amid confusion and apparent age restrictions at the federal level, some states are taking steps to ensure their residents can get the COVID vaccine this fall.
Amid confusion at the federal level about access to updated COVID-19 vaccines, several states are taking steps this fall to make sure that residents have broad access to the shots.
While the Food and Drug Administration recently approved updated COVID-19 vaccines, the agency changed its recommendations about who is eligible for the shots to those 65 and older or younger people with “high risk” conditions.
In addition, CVS said at one point the shots would not be available in 16 states — including Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — that required vaccines to be approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is not meeting until Sept. 18-19.
Governors and cabinet-level officials in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Colorado and New Mexico responded by issuing executive orders or directions to boards of health and pharmacy to ensure access to the vaccines.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement that the state would protect residents’ rights to the COVID and other vaccines.
California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii have formed a Western Health Alliance to develop their own immunization guidelines in the wake of disruptions at the CDC.
“It’s good news,” says Wendy E. Parmet, a leading expert in public health law and director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern’s School of Law.
What Massachusetts and other states are doing is not mandating COVID vaccines but making them available to people over and under age 65, she says.
“States can make it easier to get vaccines,” Parmet says. “As distrust rises, accessibility becomes more and more important. We can make it accessible,” so people don’t have to spend hours finding a pharmacy or drive out of state.
“We can ensure that insurance companies that are under state regulation cover the vaccines. We can create state messaging. States can (operate) vaccine clinics,” Parmet says.
What states like Massachusetts are doing is making sure that people can continue to get COVID vaccines at the most convenient location, which for most people is their local pharmacy, says Neil Maniar, director of Northeastern’s master of public health program.
“About 90% of individuals get their COVID vaccines at a pharmacy,” he says.
Maniar says in some states the pharmacy will provide the vaccine with a physician’s prescription.
But prior to Healey’s order this week, Massachusetts was not one of those states. Pharmacists in Massachusetts could only provide the vaccine if it was on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ list, he says.
The irony is that states like Massachusetts relied on the committee due its history of scientific leadership.
But public health officials have called that leadership into question after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired and replaced committee members.
Maniar says that development, combined with the recent ouster of CDC Director Susan Monarez over vaccine policy, has led to pushback from the medical community and public health communities.
