Whatâs the over/under on the vote to confirm Raimondo as Commerce secretary?
Send us your best guess on the final vote, and you could win a Rhode Map tote bag
By Dan McGowan Globe Staff,Updated March 2, 2021, 9:25 a.m.
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Gov. Gina Raimondo testifies remotely via videoconference during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on her nomination to be secretary of the Commerce Department, as Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) listen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021.JONATHAN ERNST/NYT
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COVID-19 numbers are going down, but R.I. isnât out of the woods yet
Letâs take a look at the case rates by city and town
By Dan McGowan Globe Staff,Updated February 25, 2021, 10:44 a.m.
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Volunteers and local medical workers inoculate local residents at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island, on Feb. 13, 2021.JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
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LEADING OFF
Happy Thursday and welcome to Rhode Map, your daily guide to everything happening in the Ocean State. Iâm Dan McGowan and Iâm sorry to report this, but New Haven pizza > Providence pizza. Follow me on Twitter
CVS and Walgreens will soon start providing COVID-19 vaccine shots to people 75 and older at some of its stores, according to Rhode Island health officials.
CVS will start vaccinating at one location in Johnston and one in Providence on Sunday, CVS spokesman Matt Blanchette said. People will be able to book appointments starting Saturday on cvs.com and in the CVS app.
The state last weekend started vaccinating people 75 and older as part of a pilot program through cities and towns.
The two CVS locations starting Sunday will use part of the state’s allocation of vaccine doses, and will be separate from a federal pharmacy program that will start next week.
The Rhode Island Department of Health is yet again telling people not to share COVID vaccine registration links.
In a Facebook post Tuesday night, the Department of Health said that it had not yet launched a public vaccination signup website, as other states have done. As part of its vaccination of outpatient health-care providers, it’s sending registration links to people eligible for those shots.
“Unfortunately, it has come to [the Department of Health’s] attention that these links are being shared,” the Department of Health wrote.
Anyone going to an outpatient provider clinic will have to show ID and verify their employment, and anyone who doesn’t match a pre-approved list will be turned away.
Every other state in the country has been quicker than Rhode Island to prioritize COVID vaccine recipients by age, according to The New York Times.
The newspaper reported that Rhode Island was the last holdout for making broader swaths of seniors eligible for vaccination.
Rhode Island’s slow rollout of vaccination for older people has rankled advocacy groups like AARP Rhode Island, which has called the proportion of seniors vaccinated for COVID-19 “inexplicable, life threatening and unacceptable.”
Vaccination of seniors is now in something of a gray area in Rhode Island. Of course, seniors have been getting vaccinated if they were living in nursing homes or if they fell into another category; one of the first people in the state to get vaccinated was a 70-year-old emergency-room nurse.