Last week, Massachusetts health officials announced a new strategy for getting the COVID-19 vaccine to as many people as possible. The state is doubling down on its mass vaccination centers — and, except in some hardest-hit communities, it won't send vaccines to local health boards. The heads of more than a dozen local senior centers spoke out against that move in a virtual press conference Friday. They also made other recommendations for improving vaccine access for seniors. Doreen Arnfield is the director of the Amesbury Council on Aging. She spoke with GBH's Craig LeMoult. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Craig LeMoult: So you've already been doing some vaccine clinics for seniors in Amesbury, right? How's that been going so far?
Doreen Arnfield: Well, we only had one last week in Amesbury. We've been signing people up to to go. We've signed a few people up to go to the West Newbury site, so we haven't really gotten started. I mean, we have the infrastructure. We're ready to go. But Amesbury is having a hard time getting the vaccines, as a lot of other communities are.
LeMoult: So needless to say, there are still a lot of people over 75 in town who aren't vaccinated yet. Right now, of course, people over 65 can qualify as well.
Arnfield: Yeah, exactly. We have a long list of 75 and over folks that are still waiting to get the vaccines, calling us all the time, anxious and frustrated. They don't want to go to the mass vaccination sites. They can't get there for transportation reasons or mobility reasons. They have a hard time using technology. Not everyone — I'm just saying in general that this is a lot of what we're hearing. So really, it makes sense to keep the vaccines local, in my mind.
LeMoult: For the closest mass vaccination site, is that a challenge for people in Amesbury to get to there, to navigate to that site?
Arnfield: Yeah. The Danvers site is probably the closest. I know people that are very well equipped to sign up online and register, and they've told me that they tried to register and the site crashed. They try again a couple hours later, and then were told there were no more appointments available.
I really think the solution to that is to set up software that can take pre-registrations so that a person that's experiencing that frustration, at least they put all their information in and maybe they get a call back or an email back to say when the appointment is available, when the vaccine is available, so at least it can alleviate some of the stress on that senior who's trying to sign up.
I would recommend that for 65+, that phase two group of people and the people with two comorbidities. I think the 75+ folks should still be left to do their vaccines locally, because transportation is a problem and technology is an issue.
LeMoult: Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said in a letter to towns that change is being made to streamline things, to actually increase access because more people can get vaccinated at the sites and they're not restricted by geography. She said 95% of the state's population lives within 45 minutes of a mass vaccination site or within 30 minutes a regional site. Also, there's the pharmacies and other retail locations. How do you respond to her suggestion that this is actually a better way to vaccinate more people?
Arnfield: Well, I think it's one way to do it, and I think it works for some people. I don't think it works for everyone, for the reasons I mentioned. There are people that don't have family and don't have a means to get there. For us, I would love to say, OK, let's use our school busses and bus them all in, but we can't. How many can we put on a school bus? We have to socially distance, right? Or if we have a van, we can only take a couple at a time, and then we would have to disinfect. I mean, how many could we even serve in a day? A couple? Two or three, four or five? It just is not the most efficient way to do things.
People don't want to drive. Even if they have a family member that can take them, there are a lot of people that are pretty anxious about going that distance that they'd rather just wait. That's what we're hearing — they'd rather just wait. It's a hassle. And then, like I said, there are people that don't have that form of transportation. They don't have family to drive them. And then there's the homebound.
We're concerned about how that's going to happen. We, the council on aging directors, have ideas about that, and I would like to offer those ideas.
