Rhode Island’s plan to prioritize COVID-19 vaccine distribution by age, underlying health conditions and geography makes sense conceptually. For it to be effective, however, the state must eliminate gray areas in its guidance that to this point have left too much to interpretation by community groups eager to get their constituencies vaccinated.
Many residents were stunned to hear that the state’s two largest hospital groups, Lifespan Corp. and Care New England Health System, were offering vaccines to workers positioned well behind the front lines in the health care crisis, including board members.
In a state where leaders cite a limited supply of vaccine yet profess to support federal guidelines to vaccinate residents aged 65 and older now, this is a clear and potentially disastrous conflict of priorities. Yet state Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said publicly that Lifespan and CNE were given leeway to decide which individuals among their thousands of employees needed the vaccine.
The state was right, however, in deciding teachers would not be a priority in the next phase of vaccine distribution. That’s not because teachers don’t deserve it – it’s because there isn’t enough vaccine to go around.
But Dr. Alexander-Scott also said people in parts of several communities hard-hit by the virus will be prioritized this month. How the state plans to do this, while also shifting to vaccinating a larger group of seniors statewide, remains unclear.
Such gray areas only frustrate residents, while encouraging inequities in distribution that state leaders say they are eager to avoid.
