With no guidelines yet from CDC, getting a COVID shot remains confusing : Shots

It was difficult for parents to get their recently coined children, as well as for many healthy adults, because the CDC has not weighed with official guidelines to administer them.

Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty images

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Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty images

Remy Sweeney-Garrett desperately wants her daughters to vaccinate against Covid-19. But so far it has been impossible.

“I am very worried and frustrated,” explains Sweeney-Garrett, 34, who lives in Seattle with her 9-year-old daughter Maxine and her 18-month-old daughter Maeve. “And, yes, I’m angry.”

Sweeney-Garrett has not been able to get photos of her daughters because the centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not yet published final lines to administer them. The rules are necessary for the federal children’s vaccine program to start sending vaccines to doctors, health services and others. About half of us, the children, are eligible for shots through the program.

“I am worried about my youngest daughter to have to go to the hospital because she is sensitive to respiratory complications,” explains Sweeney-Garrett. “And it’s frustrating because I have the impression that it is under the control of the people of our government.”

The discrepancy by the CDC is very unusual. As a general rule, the CDC acts in a few days – sometimes hours – due to the urgency of putting the shots in the arms before the rise in winter.

The delay has created “a lot of confusion both among the public and even among the providers of what status is”, explains Dr. Susan Kansagra, chief doctor of the association of State and territorial health officials.

Sweeney-Garrett is far from alone.

“We have parents who ask for vaccines every day. They want the covid vaccine,” said Dr. Elias Kass, who is the doctor of the Sweeney-Garrett family. “And we don’t have it. And we have no ETA. We have nothing. We don’t want children to be sick. We have the opportunity to prevent this suffering. And we, as a society, are blowing.”

The delay of the CDC also forced adults looking for vaccination to continue navigating a patchwork of often confusing and frustrating state rules which, in many places, has made it difficult for them to be vaccinated. Even if many states have taken measures to facilitate the obtaining of vaccines, some still need prescriptions and some pharmacists still refuse people who cannot document that they meet new eligibility conditions.

“It is a waste. And it is an easily avoidable waste,” explains Dorit Reiss, who studies vaccine policies at the University of California in San Francisco. “They have chosen not to act. I think it will harm public health and the result will be more covid-19 and more harm.”

The Ministry of Health and Social Services, which oversees the CDC, did not immediately respond to requests for comments or explanations of NPR.

This year’s deployment of this year of coated vaccines was unusually chaotic from the start. Until this year, anyone from 6 months or more could be vaccinated by their pharmacist without a prescription. But for the first time this year, the Food and Drug Administration only approved the new plans for people at risk of serious complications because of their age or their health, causing generalized confusion and frustration.

Then, the powerful CDC advisory committee on vaccination practices, which the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filled with anti-vaccine members with similar views, weighed on nuts and bolts to make them widely available.

After a tumultuous meeting of two days last month, the Kennedy Committee recommended adding a new hoop to be vaccinated, but also took measures that could make more people eligible, let more pharmacists give the shots and start shipping vaccines for children.

But the CDC has not yet accepted these recommendations – freezing everything in limbo.

“This is critical access to downstream,” explains Kansagra of the association of State and territorial health officials. “It’s a huge problem.”

And now, with the government closed, no one knows when the CDC could finally act or what the agency could do.

Civil servants are particularly worried about the winter respiratory reason to come.

“We don’t know exactly how bad it could be, but it could certainly be very bad,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas Health and Human Services Department in Texas. “It’s very frustrating. Our jobs are made more difficult rather than easier.”