By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald
COVID vaccines could start to be available to more elderly people and to essential workers in the Tri-Cities area as soon as the end of January.
The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that first health care workers and long-term care residents and staff receive the limited quantities of the vaccine, including both an initial shot and a booster shot a few weeks later.
Those vaccinations have begun, said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for Benton and Franklin counties, at a Benton Franklin Health District media briefing on Thursday.
The majority of eligible health care workers and residents and staff of nursing and other long-term care homes could be immunized against COVID by late January, allowing the next group picked for the vaccine to begin getting immunized, she said.
The Washington State Department of Health plans to release more information within a week on who could get the next round of COVID vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that the next group prioritized for vaccination be people ages 75 and older and frontline essential workers.
However, the state of Washington needs to agree that is the best use of its allotment of COVID vaccine, just as it initially agreed with the CDC recommendation that health care workers and long term care residents be vaccinated first.
The third group prioritized by the CDC for COVID vaccines includes people ages 65 to 74; people ages 16 to 64 with high-risk medical conditions and other essential workers.
The hope continues to be that by late spring or early summer the COVID vaccine should be available to anyone who wants it, offering immunizations beyond the three priority groups, Dr. Person said.
Initially, health care facilities, such as hospitals, are vaccinating their own workers and the Trump administration has partnered with CVS and Walgreens to provide vaccine services to long term care homes.
As more people are approved to receive the vaccine, people are expected to get their shots at the same places they get flu shots â¬Ä” pharmacies, clinics and doctor’s offices. There also might be some immunization events, such as the drive thru events offered for flu shots.
Earlier in the pandemic it seemed unthinkable that COVID immunizations would begin to be available by the end of 2020, said Dr. Person.
“This really means we are turning the pages to a new chapter in our battle of this pandemic,” Dr. Person said.
Vaccine not a cure all
Getting the vaccine is not a guarantee that a person will not get COVID-19. But if they are infected, they should not become as sick as they would have without the vaccine, she said.
Tri-Cities area residents will need to treat the vaccine as another way to stop the spread of the coronavirus and protect themselves and others, public health officials say.
People should continue to wear face coverings in public, maintain six feet of distance from nonhousehold members and stay home when sick, she said.
The same precautions also are recommended to protect against emerging variants of COVID-19 that may be more infectious, she said.
A new, more infectious strain of the virus circulating in England also has been detected in California and Colorado.
