As others struggle with low vaccine supply, colleges and hospitals have a surplus problem
Conflicting, ambiguous state guidance creates confusion in vaccine rollout
By Deirdre Fernandes and Kay Lazar Globe Staff,Updated January 27, 2021, 8:45 p.m.
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Northeastern University had nearly 2,000 doses of precious COVID vaccine sitting in freezers
last week after most of its front-line and emergency workers already had been immunized. So college officials informed the state that they planned to use the leftovers on other employees, including older adults and those with multiple medical conditions, who would soon be eligible under the state plan.
On Monday, the university started immunizing those workers and planned to give shots to some 730 people throughout the week. But by Tuesday, the schoolâs vaccination clinic had come to an abrupt halt. The state wanted the college to limit immunizations to people who were 75 or older, a relatively tiny group on a college ca
Gov. Charlie Baker is resisting calls from undertakers and dozens of lawmakers, including many in Central Massachusetts, to follow the lead of 33 other states and bump funeral directors to the first phase of COVID-19 vaccinations.
“I’m dumbfounded,” C.R. Lyons, a Danvers funeral director who serves as president of the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association (MFDA), said Thursday after reviewing the Baker administration’s response to the calls.
The funeral association has, for weeks, been lobbying Baker to bump a subset of funeral workers about 1,900 people into phase one of vaccinations.
The funeral workers, as more than 120 lawmakers noted in a Jan. 14 letter to Baker, are the only “COVID-facing workers,” in the state not currently in the first phase.
Rural states got off to a faster start on vaccinations, but big urban centers expected to gain momentum
CDC lists Massachusetts in the middle of the pack, along with Texas and New York.
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Physician Alister Martin received one of the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on Dec. 16.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
West Virginia deployed National Guard units to get first doses of the vaccine to every nursing home before New Yearâs Day. In South Dakota, the Civil Air Patrol waited at the Sioux Falls airport to ferry vaccines to remote parts of the state.