Lack of vaccine info frustrating to seniors

The following letter was sent to Gov. John Carney, with a copy submitted to the Cape Gazette for publication.

This is to request that the state government provide to its citizens more relevant and timely information on the progress being made in the administration of COVID-19 vaccines.

We understand and acknowledge that the key issue is the available supply of vaccine doses. If we had ample supply, doubtless all Delawareans could have been vaccinated by now. This is a given. Obtaining annual flu vaccines, for example, never seems to be an issue in Delaware.

My wife and I are both 75 years young - “Phase 1b.” One of us also has heart disease and a compromised immune system. We registered with the state to receive COVID-19 vaccines within five minutes of the earliest date and time we were permitted to do so. We have also registered with Beebe Healthcare and Bayhealth. So far, we have received no invitations to be vaccinated. We have also repeatedly tried to schedule vaccine appointments with participating pharmacies, with no luck there.

On the news, each day we learn of the current positivity rates on Delmarva (meaningless, since we don’t know how many are asymptomatic and untested), the current number of persons hospitalized for COVID-19, and the change (up or down) of those hospitalization numbers.

We occasionally hear about vaccine events, and the approximate number who received vaccines at such events. The specific total number of vaccines administered is on the state website. All of this information surely is important to some, for various reasons.

However, it tells us nothing about where we are in the queue waiting for our vaccines. We called the telephone number on the state website to try to learn more. Basically we were told simply a computer algorithm determines who receives the invitations. It feels like we are being overlooked.

According to the state website, Delaware has a projected population of 979,920 as of December 2020. The U.S. Census Bureau reports 19.4 percent of Delaware’s population is 65 or more years old. That would mean 190,104 Delawareans are 65 or more years old. According to the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, as of Feb. 22 Delaware has received 162,050 doses of the vaccine. In addition, 27,000 doses have been provided to pharmacies in Delaware, for a total of 189,050 doses in the state. The DHSS website also shows 9,658 doses remaining. So, 179,392 doses have been administered in the First State. We have no data on the number of citizens eligible for Phase 1a.

Delaware has been in Phase 1b since Jan. 20. For our sense of security, those of us who have registered for vaccines need to know how close we are to the front of the queue. There are two metrics which would give us that sense of security: 1) The number of citizens eligible for Phase 1b who have registered to receive vaccines; 2) Of those who have registered, the number who have received vaccines.

Having this information, updated on a daily basis, we would have a sense that we are drawing closer to the day that we could receive an invitation to obtain the vaccine. Without this information we are in the dark, and anxious about the prospect of being able to have a vaccine at all.

We implore you: Please have the appropriate state agencies make this information available to all news outlets in Delaware on a daily basis. It would go a long way toward assuaging the anxiety we have about being unprotected from COVID-19 for an interminable period of time.