Despite new federal limits on who can get a Covid-19 vaccine and the arrival of the cold and flu season, many Vermonters can still get a booster, though details surrounding Medicare reimbursement and federal recommendations remain uncertain.

In a late August post on X, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Food and Drug Administration approved Covid-19 booster shots, but only for those 65 and above or with existing health risks. 

Vermont state officials are now awaiting a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which typically guides public health directives and insurers’ coverage, for those who want to get a fall booster shot.  

“Really the best thing that I can recommend is either to go online and see if you can set up an online appointment (for a vaccine), or call pharmacies in your area to see if they’re available,” said Julie Arel, the state’s interim commissioner of health.

In Vermont, pharmacies are moving forward with administering the vaccine. Kinney Drugs and CVS have the updated Covid vaccines in stock. Pharmacies order directly from the manufacturer. Providers — doctors’ offices and other clinics — often get vaccines through the state, which is not yet able to order the vaccines from the CDC. 

Kinney Drugs’ spokesperson Alice Maggiore confirmed that the stores can administer the 2025-26 vaccines to people above 65 and individuals between 12 and 64 who attest to having one of the qualifying conditions, as outlined by the CDC. 

CVS is able to vaccinate anyone over 5 years old, who attests to eligibility under the same CDC’s preexisting conditions list, or anyone older than 65, according to a company executive, Amy Thibault. 

The underlying risks outlined by the CDC range from asthma or a smoking history to mental health disorders, like depression obesity, or physical inactivity. Patients do not need a doctor’s prescription to confirm the underlying condition at Kinney or CVS, both spokespeople said.

Typically, insurers cover vaccines received in a pharmacy. Whether some private and government insurers will be able to cover the vaccines remains uncertain. Even if people can get the vaccine by walking into a pharmacy, it’s unclear if they will have to pay for it:  “It’s a little bit mind boggling,” Arel said. 

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, the state’s largest private insurer, plans to continue to cover the vaccine for any member, at no cost and with no prior approval, said Andrew Garland, a vice president and spokesperson for the insurer. Blue Cross Blue Shield of VT intends to do so through 2026, as well. MVP, the state’s other private insurer selling plans on the marketplace, also does not anticipate changes in its vaccine coverage policy, said Elizabeth Boody, a spokesperson for the company. 

What employer-sponsored insurers and providers like Tricare, the military health system, might be able to cover, is still unclear.

Since the FDA has already approved the vaccine for those over 65, it is likely that Medicare, which covers the same age group, will cover the vaccines. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law, San Francisco, told NBC News that once the FDA approves a vaccine, Medicare has the authority to cover it.

Generally a Covid vaccine undergoes three steps for approval: First the FDA authorizes the new vaccines — which it did in August. Then a panel within the CDC called ACIP (short for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) issues a recommendation on the vaccine. It is scheduled to meet Sept. 18-19, to do so. This year many are holding their breath ahead of ACIP’s announcement, since Kennedy gutted the panel and replaced it with many vaccine skeptics. 

The state is weighing whether and how it will need to break from that typical process, and is currently exploring what Vermont statute allows for breaking with that process.

While it is quite common for providers to prescribe a drug outside of what the FDA has authorized them for, it’s not typical, however, for that to happen with vaccines. The FDA’s lack of formal guidance on what qualifies as an underlying condition leaves room for interpretation surrounding who qualifies for the vaccine.

“There’s some flexibility in there, but because it’s not as clear as usual, there is going to be hesitancy, in all likelihood,” said Arel. “And anytime there’s hesitancy, anytime there’s confusion, it’s going to lead to lower immunization rates. We really want to try to avoid that.”

The Department of Health is also looking to Vermont’s neighbors in the Northeast for direction, Arel said. In August, the department joined with other state health departments in the region to build a coalition ready to respond to shifts in federal guidance. Though the group has no unified recommendation, she says it’s something they are considering to help mediate the current disjunctive state of vaccine recommendations and approvals. 

“If as a region, we can become more aligned, it helps people across the whole Northeast region to feel a level of confidence in their state public health department’s decisions and how we’re moving forward,” she said.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healy required in-state insurance carriers to cover the vaccines recommended by the state’s Department of Public Health, even if they are outside of the federal recommendations. The state’s commissioner of public health also issued a standing order that allows pharmacists to issue Covid shots to anyone over the age of 5. 

In response, Arel said Vermont is watching its neighbors and looking into where state statute might allow for potential action. 

“Getting clarity and having a message be clear and simple, is going to be the most important thing we do,” Arel said. “Unfortunately, we are still working through all of that, but we are committed to finding our way through it and making it as simple and easy as possible.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: As feds tighten Covid vaccine rules, Vermont works to maintain access .

This is the second story in a two-part series that looks back on the impact of Covid-19 in Vermont after five years. The first story, “New technology, and mistrust, is legacy of Covid-19 for Vermont public health,” can be found here.

Patsy Kelso, Vermont’s state epidemiologist, remembers hearing about Covid-19 for the first time through the “routine channels.” The Centers for Disease Control and other public health entities regularly share information about emerging infectious diseases, from mpox virus circulating worldwide to Ebola outbreaks in Uganda. 

But there was nothing, at first, that suggested Covid would be the one to shut down the world. “It did take me by surprise, personally, how quickly things ramped up,” Kelso said. 

The spread of Covid within the United States was so misunderstood that the focus of many experts was on preventing transmission from international travelers. In reality, the virus had been spreading nationwide for months. 

Vermont officials recommended hand washing and staying home when sick, but masking and social distancing were not yet on the horizon for the general public. In fact, only three days after Vermont’s first Covid case on March 7, 2020, hundreds of people attended a University of Vermont basketball game. At least 20 confirmed Covid cases were later linked to the event. 

But the situation was quick to change. On March 15, 2020, Gov. Phil Scott ordered K-12 schools to shut down to prevent Covid’s spread. A flurry of other closures followed, until Scott issued a blanket order on March 24: “Stay home” and “stay safe.”  

Covid tracing in the state began with a whiteboard in Kelso’s office listing individual Vermonters’ initials and their test results. Then she had to bring in a second whiteboard. Then the entire office was sent home, and the department was forced to rapidly come up with a system for tracking hundreds of people and tests. 

On the testing side, Helen Reid, then director of health surveillance at the Vermont Department of Health, was scrambling to scale up Covid laboratory testing. Early shortages of basic testing equipment — pipette tips, plastic — hampered their progress. 

“It was hard to anticipate the scale that this would go to,” said Reid, who now heads the department's infectious disease division. “So with every new piece of information, we were sort of pivoting and adjusting our approach, and doing it pretty quickly.”

Along with supplies, the department was in desperate need of more staff. Officials put out a call early on for “basically anyone in state government who had a microbiology degree,” Reid said. Still, she recalled working extremely long hours in the early weeks of the pandemic. 

“We went from, I think it was, testing about 56 specimens a day in the early days of Covid, to our team testing 1,500 per day by the end of May, because we didn't really have a choice at that point,” she said.

As the health department scrambled, state officials tallied the numbers. Early Covid press conferences featured charts of hospital capacity and the amount of need under “best case” and “worst case” scenarios. In those early months of the pandemic, Vermont did not come close to hitting its hospital capacity. In fact, cases ebbed into the spring and summer months, and the state reported zero deaths for months. 

Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher and lecturer at Dartmouth College, recalled Vermonters in that time beginning to talk about the state as an “escape community,” protected from Covid by its relative isolation and rurality. But she said she had reason to be skeptical since her research in health equity suggested rural areas can be uniquely vulnerable to illness. 

Many people think about disease risk as “distances between houses and physical infrastructure,” but rural communities often have tight-knit bonds and anchor institutions like schools and employers that bring them together, she said. 

Rural areas also have more essential workers and fewer hospital beds and other health infrastructure. Yet she was sympathetic to those who wanted to return to their pre-pandemic lives. 

“None of us want to alter our daily lives for months or years on end,” Sosin said.

Vaccine goals

The vaccination campaign in 2021 marked a new stage in the pandemic. After rolling out the vaccine to older and high-risk Vermonters, Scott announced that May a benchmark-based plan to reopen Vermont: If 80% of Vermonters get vaccinated, he said, he would lift major Covid restrictions. 

“Admittedly, this would be an ambitious goal for most,” he said at a press conference announcing the initiative. “And to be honest, most states won’t come close to reaching it. But I believe Vermont can show the country how it’s done.”

On June 14, 2021, the state hit that goal, and Scott followed through on his promise. Once again, Vermonters enjoyed a summer light on Covid limitations. 

Vermont remains close to the top of the nation in its initial Covid vaccination rate, tied with three other states, according to USAfacts.org. Kelso praised the policy, saying that it helped limit deaths later in the pandemic. 

“I think that was a strong policy that resulted in both large uptake of the vaccine, and also quickly, because Vermonters wanted things to reopen,” she said. 

But once again, the Covid ease was not to last. 

That summer, the more severe and infectious Delta variant began circulating through Vermont. Cases and deaths surged in the fall. Then Omicron hit. The less severe, but extremely contagious, variant spread quickly nationwide. In Vermont, reported hospitalizations topped the state’s hospital bed capacity, forcing them to take emergency staffing measures for weeks. 

Scott pushed forward with reopening despite the rise. Just as Omicron began to wane, he announced the end of school mask mandates, citing the need for children to return to normalcy. 

Three years later, Sosin remains critical of this policy. She said the state leadership early in the pandemic was “fast and effective,” but “lost discipline in responding to the pandemic in later stages.” 

She argues that masking, tied with other Covid-concious policies, actually helped to keep schools open during the worst of the pandemic. 

“None of us thought that we should shut the state down the way we did in March 2020,” she said. “We knew a lot more and had many more tools to respond to the pandemic.”

Kelso took a more positive view of the state’s response, but said the restrictions and regulations were a balance that had trade offs. 

Statewide and public health policies in Vermont contributed to the state having the lowest death rate in the nation, she said, but there were downsides to some of them as well. 

“Limiting visitation in long-term care facilities, for example, really helped reduce introduction of the virus into a facility where it could then spread quickly and result in terrible outcomes, but that also had devastating impacts on individuals’ lives,” Kelso said. 

Vermont might have had a comparatively low death rate, but that’s not how Sosin thinks when evaluating the state’s performance. “I never think about it in terms of Vermont versus Texas. I think about it in terms of lives that didn't need to be lost,” she said. 

“I always think we measure this on our own terms, and we would not resort to lowest-common-denominator metrics in thinking about public health, or the preservation of human life,” Sosin said. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story was wrong about the current job title of a public health official with the Vermont Department of Health.

Read the story on VTDigger here: A visual history of Covid-19’s path through Vermont.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it has approved and authorized administration of a new Covid-19 vaccine formula, and Vermonters will soon be able to access those vaccinations at primary care offices and pharmacies in the state, according to the state Department of Health.

The vaccine is designed to target currently circulating variants more closely and better protect against serious outcomes of the virus, the FDA said in a press release. 

As immunity wanes in the general population, prior vaccinations and exposure to the coronavirus are less effective in preventing future infections, according to Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

“Vaccination continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention,” Marks said in the release. “These updated vaccines meet the agency’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.” 

Vermont’s Covid-19 indicators have been on an upswing this summer, with 17 people dying from the virus so far this month — the most this year since January’s total of 29 deaths, according to the Department of Health’s weekly surveillance report. 

Wastewater facilities in Montpelier, South Burlington and Essex Junction have seen an increase in Covid-19 levels recently as well. 

The updated vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are approved for use in people 12 and older, and other updated versions from the two companies are authorized for emergency use for individuals between 6 months and 11 years of age, according to the FDA release.  

Health care providers in Vermont will begin ordering products within the next two weeks, according to Sharon Muellers, senior public health communication officer with the health department. 

“Supply for this year is on par with what we received last season and should support the need,” Muellers said via email. 

Kinney Drugs, a pharmacy chain in New York and Vermont, said it expects to open appointments for the updated vaccine early next week, and, along with other pharmacies, is authorized to administer the vaccines to individuals 3 years and older.

“As a Pharmacist, I am pleased that the FDA has approved this updated COVID-19 vaccine,” Kinney Drugs’ president John Marraffa said in a press release Thursday. “Incidents of COVID-19 are already increasing throughout both New York and Vermont, so it is especially good timing with students heading back to school.”

Although the federally funded “Bridge Access Program” — which has provided free Covid vaccines to people without insurance coverage or whose insurance didn’t cover the vaccines — ends this month, Muellers said the health department will offer support for local vaccination efforts this fall. 

Mueller also noted that this year’s influenza vaccine is trivalent, meaning it protects against three different strains of the flu, and recommended adults ages 75 and older should get an RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, vaccine.

Just like seasonal flu vaccines, the FDA said it anticipates annual assessment of the composition of Covid-19 vaccines, unless a “markedly more infectious variant” emerges.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont prepares for new Covid-19 vaccines after FDA approval.

The Vermont Supreme Court on Friday affirmed a lower court decision that the state and the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union were immune from legal challenges brought by the parents of a student who received a Covid-19 vaccine against their wishes.

The litigation, brought against the state and the school district two years ago by Dario and Shujen Politella, claimed the defendants were not immune from legal challenges. Workers at a vaccination clinic held at the Academy School in Brattleboro in November 2021, the Politellas’ suit argued, were negligent when they mixed up name tags and mistakenly administered a Covid-19 shot to their child, who was 6 years old at the time.

Mark Speno, the Windham Southeast superintendent, later wrote to the parents that school officials were “deeply sorry that this mistake happened, and have worked internally to improve our screening procedures.”

The Politellas sued in Windham Superior Court, but Judge Michael Kainen dismissed the case in January 2023. They then appealed to the Supreme Court, where a hearing was held on May 28 of this year.

The litigation centers around the federal PREP Act, a 2005 law that provides immunity from liability to government officials administering “countermeasures” in response to a public health emergency — in this case, a vaccine against the Covid-19 virus that had caused a global pandemic starting in early 2020.

The Politellas and their attorney, Ronald Ferrara, argued that the PREP Act did not provide blanket immunity in this case, and said that the alleged negligence of the school district and the state’s clinic workers was subject to damages.

The lawsuit did not challenge the administration of the vaccine itself, but instead challenged the defendants’ failing to adhere to the parent’s wishes. The conduct of staff prior to the administration of the vaccine, Ferrara said during the May Supreme Court hearing, was “really the cause of harm in this case.”

“It shouldn’t disallow it just because the PREP Act seems to be such a sweeping immunity statute,” he said at the time. “If you do that you create some bad public policy because this kind of mistake can be repeated without ever having any judicial review. You can have this kind of stuff going on all over the place.”

But the Supreme Court disagreed with that argument, affirming the lower court case’s ruling.

Justice Karen Carroll wrote in the decision that the federal PREP Act bars all claims based on state law against defendants and that the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

“We conclude that when the federal PREP Act immunizes a defendant, the PREP Act bars all state-law claims against that defendant as a matter of law,” Carroll wrote.

The Politellas were not immediately available for comment. Ferrara, their attorney, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Supreme Court dismisses complaint in accidental Covid-19 vaccination case.

The Department of Vermont Health Access has changed the way it pays the Covid-19 vaccine administration fee, easing the way for Vermonters on Medicaid to get the vaccine in pharmacies.

Andrea DeLaBruere, commissioner of the department, said via email that the administration fee is higher for the Covid vaccine than other vaccines. Until this Thursday, pharmacies seeking to cover the fee would have to rebill the department to get paid the difference. “Most of them are doing so,” she wrote.

On Thursday, the department began paying the higher Covid fee without that rebilling process. CVS Pharmacy spokesperson Matthew Blanchette told VTDigger that the department’s “coding updates” would allow all Vermont Medicaid recipients 19 and older to receive the Covid vaccine without a copay.

While Medicaid covers the cost of childhood vaccinations, including Covid vaccinations, through the Vaccine for Children program, the department was not aware of any pharmacies participating in the program, DeLaBruere said.

Other difficulties have plagued the rollout of the latest Covid vaccine at pharmacies and provider offices. Appointments are limited, and some insurers do not cover the vaccine at certain pharmacies because they are out-of-network. 

A list of vaccine providers is available at vaccines.gov. People without insurance, or those whose insurance does not cover Covid vaccination, might be able to get vaccinated through the federal Bridge Access Program, according to the health department. 

Correction: A previous version of this story mischaracterized what Medicaid covers for childhood vaccines at pharmacies.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont resolves difficulty with Medicaid recipients getting Covid vaccine.

The federal government authorized new Covid-19 boosters on Sept. 11, paving the way for millions of Americans to get updated protection tailored toward recent strains of the disease.

Two weeks later, the vaccine has slowly started making its way to Vermont pharmacies and health care providers — but many Vermonters report that appointments are difficult to find. 

Katherine McDonald, a Maryland resident who lives part time in Barre, told VTDigger she scoured the pharmacies in Barre and Berlin and found no available appointments into October. She even visited the pharmacies in person to double-check that they wouldn’t take a walk-in, only to be told that they could only schedule slots online.

Ultimately, she found an appointment for this weekend in Morrisville, a lengthy drive away for the 77-year-old McDonald. 

“There’s so much controversy among folks about whether to get the shot for a lot of different reasons,” she said. “If you have trouble making an appointment, a lot of people may not persevere.”

A search of major pharmacy chain websites appears to back her experience. CVS, Hannaford, Walgreens and Kinney Drugs had no appointments listed in central Vermont as of Tuesday, and few appointments listed elsewhere in the state in places like the Northeast Kingdom. 

Vermont is not the only place with limited Covid vaccine appointments available. National news outlets have reported a limited supply of doses at national pharmacy chains as Moderna and Pfizer begin to ship out the latest booster. 

Katie Warchut, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health, said the supply of Covid boosters is limited, but the vaccines would be more broadly available in coming weeks. 

“We appreciate Vermonters’ patience,” Warchut said in an email.

Matthew Blanchette, a spokesperson for CVS Health, said the pharmacy chain was receiving doses on a rolling basis and advised Vermonters to continue to check its website for new appointments.

John Marraffa Jr., president of Kinney Drugs, said in a statement that the company had not experienced a “shortage” of the Covid vaccine, but that it planned to “open appointments only when we have enough vaccine to take care of those patients.”

The limited supply comes amid changes in how Covid vaccination campaigns are being handled at a state and federal level. Covid vaccines are now commercialized, meaning the federal government is no longer taking an active role in supplying doses to the states. Instead, each pharmacy or pharmacy chain is responsible for arranging its shipments, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website. 

Warchut said the commercialization has also led to issues with various insurers nationwide in covering their members’ vaccinations, as reports arise of insurance denials and delays. She said the federal government had contacted insurers to help resolve them. 

This is also the first year since the vaccine became broadly available in 2021 that the health department does not plan to host any mass vaccination clinics, Health Commissioner Mark Levine told Vermont Edition on Tuesday. 

Some Vermonters have complained that the system for finding Covid vaccines is overly complicated. Burlington resident Kate Van Wagner said the vaccines.gov website, which was created to help Americans find vaccines, is “useless.”

“(It) shows a bunch of availability, but when you click through to individual pharmacies, they don’t have any appointments for adults,” she said via email. She also couldn’t find any appointments for her 5-year-old child within 100 miles of Burlington. 

She wrote that she was experiencing “deja vu” to the time period when young children were not yet eligible for any Covid vaccine. 

“Covid (is) raging all around us,” she wrote. “We supposedly have this additional layer of protection available, but functionally it is absolutely not available.”

Warchut said she could not yet say how many Vermonters have been vaccinated with the latest booster. The health department plans to begin providing data in late October, after the numbers become high enough to avoid privacy concerns. 

As of April 2023, the last time the department published data, 35% of Vermonters 5 and older had received an updated Covid booster dose. That’s compared with 80% of the total Vermont population who had completed the primary series of the Covid vaccine.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters face limited appointments and insurance mixups with new Covid vaccines.

Last week, the federal government authorized a second Covid-19 bivalent booster shot for two higher-risk populations: people 65 years and older and those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.

The new recommendations also phase out the original monovalent vaccine that first became available in 2020. All vaccine-seekers going forward will receive the bivalent vaccine, which is more targeted to the strains of Covid currently circulating around the country. 

Here’s what you need to know about the latest recommendations and the status of Covid vaccinations in Vermont.

Who is affected by the latest recommendations?

There are two different aspects of the new recommendations that affect different groups. 

• The first is the recommendation that all people receive the bivalent vaccine rather than the monovalent one. That means anyone coming into a doctor’s office or pharmacy for a Covid dose will get the bivalent vaccine — people getting vaccinated for the first time, children who are newly qualified for a vaccine or people getting boosted after their first dose. Only one dose of the bivalent vaccine is recommended, rather than the two-dose primary course of the monovalent vaccine.

In February, the federal government issued revised recommendations for Covid vaccines for young children. Check the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website to find out more about what vaccines are recommended by age group. 

• The recommendation for a second bivalent booster dose applies only to people 65 and older who received their first bivalent booster at least four months ago and immunocompromised people who got that booster at least two months ago. 

The bivalent booster dose was introduced in September 2022 as an updated version of the vaccine. Sometimes called the Omicron booster, the bivalent vaccine targets the Omicron strains of the disease to bolster immunity to the now-dominant strain of the disease.

Why should I get the bivalent booster?

The latest recommendations come with a unique phrasing: Eligible people “may” get the second bivalent booster dose, rather than “should” get it. 

Mark Levine, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, said that’s a reflection of the changing nature of the virus and the vaccine itself. 

The federal committee in charge of making recommendations said there was insufficient data for getting a new booster every six months, but it did not want to deny people “the opportunity to get one, knowing what we understand of the concept of waning immunity,” Levine said.

“Those bits of data will eventually be out there, but right now that’s what we have,” he said. “And certainly for the immunocompromised population, I think most people would want to err on the side of doing more than less, knowing that their immune response is less robust from the start.”

As for people 65 and older, Levine said “it really is an individual decision based upon what they view their risk to be and what concerns they may have.”

The latest vaccines provide limited protection against Covid transmission, he said, but people may want to strengthen their protection against “more serious outcomes,” such as hospitalization, by getting one more booster to fight it.

Where can I get Covid vaccines?

All regular vaccine providers should carry only the bivalent vaccine going forward, Levine said. That includes doctor’s offices, pharmacies, community health centers and other vaccine providers listed on vaccines.gov. 

Major pharmacy chains CVS, Walgreens and Kinney Drugs have updated their websites to include the new guidance. The health department has more information on finding vaccine appointments on its website. 

Levine said no walk-in vaccine clinics are planned for the latest bivalent booster unless something “dramatic” happens, such as a concerning new Covid variant. 

“If we needed to have a mass vaccination site like we did before, I think we would do that,” he said. 

The department plans to continue its outreach to certain populations, such as long-term care facilities and partner organizations for people of color, he said. 

What’s the plan for Covid vaccines going forward?

These vaccine recommendations come amid falling Covid numbers throughout Vermont and the rest of the nation. Levine said he hopes this may be the first real summer since the pandemic began in March 2020 without a Covid surge at a national level. 

“To me, if we have a good summer, we’ve reached ‘endemic’” stage of the virus, he said. “Because then I would expect this to sort of become more (like) influenza … when we expect it in the fall and winter and not in the summer months.”

Levine expects the federal government to eventually recommend a Covid booster for the general population in the fall, updated once again with the latest strains. With that in mind, the department has planned a break in Covid messaging this summer to gear up for a fall vaccination campaign combining Covid and the flu. 

“Not only is there pandemic fatigue and vaccine fatigue, we don’t want there to be messaging fatigue either,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: New Covid-19 booster recommendations roll out in Vermont.

This story by Lisa Scagliotti was first published in the Waterbury Roundabout on Jan. 29.

Waterbury Ambulance Service has officially named Maggie Burke as its executive director in a nod to her dedication and experience as the organization pivots from pandemic response to establishing a modern headquarters for its second half-century. 

The decision comes as the nonprofit emergency response agency closes in on its fundraising to build a new ambulance station in Waterbury Center. Promoting Burke from operations administrator to executive director will keep leadership consistent, agency leaders said, as they transition to post-pandemic operations and prepare to break ground this spring on the facility they hope to move into about a year from now. 

As these pieces were coming into place in recent weeks, the agency also learned that it will receive $700,000 in federal funding designated for the purchase of a new transfer ambulance and to put toward the facility project.

Waterbury Ambulance is an organization that many in the community and across the region came to know well during the COVID-19 pandemic. It stepped up to answer the call from the Vermont Department of Health to open testing sites and later vaccine clinics open daily in Waterbury and Berlin. State and federal funding assisted to add dozens of staff who conducted thousands of tests and administered thousands of vaccines at events, workplaces, schools, churches, even visiting scores of homes to connect with elderly and disabled Vermonters. 

The past few years have seen multiple milestones: In 2021, Waterbury Ambulance marked its 50th year of service to the community and was named Vermont’s  Ambulance Service of the Year. Last spring, former Executive Director Mark Podgwaite received a lifetime achievement award from the state saluting his work as an EMT, an EMT educator, and an EMS manager. 

Podgwaite in October died unexpectedly at age 60, a blow to his family, friends and co-workers. Soon afterward, Burke was named interim director of Waterbury Ambulance. 

Moving up

Ambulance trustees Chair Sally Dillon said that after advertising the position, the board’s hiring committee had three applicants and interviewed two – Burke and one other – before making an offer. “Maggie has put her heart and soul into Waterbury Ambulance and the qualities it prides itself in prior to Mark’s passing,” Dillon said in announcing the choice. “She has continued with that same can-do attitude while doing his job and a lot of her previous role.”

Burke called the opportunity to lead Waterbury Ambulance “humbling and amazing.” The ambulance crew recently gathered for their annual group dinner where former members joined in sharing stories of the early days in the 1970s when the service was young. Seeing generations who have been dedicated to the same mission is a source of comfort and strength, Burke said. 

“You look around and realize that the strength of the organization is in our people,”  she said. “This is neighbors helping neighbors. But it’s stronger than any one person.”  

Dillon said she and the trustees were pleased that Burke was eager to take on the role, noting that having consistency in leadership going forward will be valuable. 

“It has certainly been a trying time for Waterbury Ambulance and EMS as a whole but together we can continue to make Waterbury Ambulance a service that we and the community can be very proud of,” Dillon said in her message to the membership. 

Burke has been with Waterbury Ambulance Service since 2015 when she started as a volunteer EMT. She later was hired on a per diem basis when she received her Advanced EMT certification. By spring 2019, she was named operations administrator.

The next step will be to review all of the duties the top two managers have in running the organization, Burke said, to decide how they will be divided between her position and a new operations director that will be advertised soon.

Dillon said she envisions Burke doing many of the tasks Podgwaite performed along with some of the work she oversaw in her number-two role such as fundraising for the ambulance service’s “Station Creation” project to build a new modern ambulance facility. 

Support grows for station project

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Waterbury Ambulance members had begun to brainstorm plans for a new station and search the community for a suitable location. Those plans were put on hold, however, when all hands were needed daily to run COVID testing and vaccine efforts. In early 2022 as pandemic duties eased, they returned to the building project. A site was secured along Route 100 in Waterbury Center on part of what was the Sayah farm just south of the Cabot Annex store and Waterbury Veterinary Hospital.

Podgwaite oversaw the development plans that call for building alongside a second new facility that will house satellite medical offices from Copley Hospital in Morrisville. Local permits have been obtained and state permitting is in progress, Burke said. 

Last spring, in announcing that the Waterbury Ambulance was moving ahead with their building plans, Burke and Podgwaite joked at how they made a good team by necessity, pointing to the compact office space they shared in the current ambulance station, literally working side-by-side at the same desk.

Built in 1983, the ambulance station used now is located beside the town highway garage on Guptil Road. The organization has long outgrown the 2,400-square-foot space with storage lining the garage walls beside the ambulances parked inside. Gear for its Waterbury Backcountry Rescue crew is stored at multiple locations including the fire department’s station on Maple Street.  

The new facility is designed at 6,500-square feet with adequate office space, training room, and quarters for on-call staff to sleep and shower. It will be built with four bays: two for fully equipped ambulances; one for the backcountry equipment; and one for a new transfer ambulance to be purchased by the end of 2024. 

The service currently has two fully equipped ambulances, one of which will be replaced by a new ambulance now on order and expected to arrive next year, Dillon said. That purchase has been anticipated for more than a year.

Having a bay to accommodate a transfer ambulance will enable Waterbury Ambulance to provide more contracted services to move patients between medical and care facilities. Dillon said that’s a vital function in demand and it often does not require a fully equipped ambulance because most transfers are not emergencies. Burke noted that the transfer vehicle would be four-wheel drive and able to respond to 911 calls with some added gear. But its main purpose would be to expand the services the agency can provide and ultimately allow Waterbury Ambulance to earn more income in the future, she said. 

Given that reimbursement from insurance and subscriptions don’t cover the full cost of routine ambulance service, finding new streams of revenue is critical. This year, for example, Waterbury Ambulance Service’s operating budget anticipates a shortfall, Dillon said. 

Purchasing and outfitting the transfer ambulance will be paid for with $225,000 in federal funding recently secured by Vermont’s U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. The appropriation is in the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Appropriations Bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. 

The ambulance service’s appropriation includes another $475,000 to be put toward the station construction project, an example of federal funding having “a meaningful impact in Vermont communities,” Sanders said.

“Too many Vermonters, and people across the country, have lost hope that government can work for them in real ways,” Sanders said in announcing funding headed to 51 Vermont projects. “Too many have lost hope that government is listening to what they need and taking real action on their behalf. With these projects, I am glad to say, Vermonters will soon see real, positive benefits in their daily lives and in their communities. I was proud to see these projects through the Senate and look forward to seeing them have a meaningful impact in Vermont communities as quickly as possible.”

Senate passage of the bill came in the final days that Vermont’s senior Sen. Patrick Leahy was in office. The longtime Democratic senator stepped down at the end of his term in early January to be succeeded by newly elected Sen. Peter Welch, also a Democrat. Becca Balint, D-Vt., now holds Vermont’s lone U.S. House seat, following Welch. 

The bottom line

Dillon and Burke said the federal funds come at a critical time for their project. When design and planning for the new station began several years ago, cost estimates were $2.5 to $3 million. 

Designs are now complete and costs have been fine-tuned, Burke said. In addition to construction materials sharply increasing in price, a few items have been updated such as security and IT systems in the plans. The bottom line has inched up to $3.4 million. 

Dillon said project planners anticipated the increase. One element of the remaining fundraising, Dillon added, will be to seek out in-kind donations to help with outfitting the station. Such contributions could have meaningful impacts on covering costs. 

Burke shared the funding breakdown. 

Waterbury Ambulance started off with $1.5 million of its own savings for the new station. To date, the project has raised $320,000 from a combination of individual donors, businesses and events. Another $600,000 is pledged by donors, plus the new federal funding. 

“We’re getting closer,” Burke said, reflecting on how far the campaign has come in less than a year. “It’s exciting and really needed.”

The municipalities that Waterbury Ambulance serves also have all agreed to ask voters on Town Meeting Day March 7 to approve allocating some of their towns’ federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to the new station. Those pledges total $100,000 and are calculated by the size of the communities served with Waterbury pledging $76,000, Duxbury $20,000 and Moretown $4,000. 

If voters approve those requests, the organization will have $400,000 left to raise, Burke said, adding that fundraising can continue as the project moves ahead with the goal of not having to borrow the remainder if possible. 

“It’s been a really, really hard year,” Burke said. “We’re just outrageously grateful to this community.”

The project schedule calls for obtaining the remaining permits in the coming weeks, a spring groundbreaking, and construction complete by next winter.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Waterbury Ambulance names executive director, lands federal funds.

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced that the federal government plans to end the emergency declarations for Covid-19 on May 11, a move that could affect Vermonters’ ability to access vaccinations, testing and treatment for the disease.

The national emergency and public health emergency declarations related to Covid have been in place since 2020, allowing a wide variety of regulatory changes on insurance, health systems, telehealth, pharmacies and vaccine authorizations.

One of the biggest impacts has been requiring Medicaid, Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and private insurers to cover Covid-related care without cost sharing, along with providing a way for uninsured people to get coverage for those services.

Agency of Human Services spokesperson Rachel Feldman said via email that Medicaid coverage for Covid testing and treatment without cost sharing would extend through Sept. 30, 2024.

The agency could not confirm as of Tuesday whether other state-run programs would change their coverage as a result of the federal declarations ending.

At a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Phil Scott said the decision to end the emergency declarations was appropriate since Covid is “just going to become part of our everyday challenges.”

“We’ve gotten through this emergency. The vaccine we have is viable, and it will become — just like we do with the normal flu, I believe — that you’ll have Covid boosters on a yearly basis of some sort,” Scott said.

But Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher at Dartmouth College, pushed back on Scott’s characterization of the pandemic, pointing out that Covid remained the third-leading cause of death in 2022, even as pandemic restrictions were rolled back.

“We’re continuing to lose more Americans each week than in the 9/11 attack,” she said. “Even though we’re out of the earliest phases of the pandemic, it’s not in any way comparable to the flu or other respiratory viruses.”

She said the change would have a bigger impact on uninsured or underinsured Vermonters, who would lose guaranteed access to free Covid vaccinations and treatments. 

Not all of that access will end when the federal emergency declarations do. Free vaccinations and antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid are expected to remain in place until the federal government depletes its purchased supply, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

But once the United States reaches that point, the price of vaccines could skyrocket, going up at least three or four times their current cost, according to a Kaiser analysis. 

“The price of vaccines may quickly be out of reach of under- and uninsured Americans,” Sosin said.

“Many of us are very concerned that this will exacerbate the disparities that we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, that it will create a situation where people with good insurance and good access to health care will have limited impacts, and those who have poor insurance or who are uninsured and who have less access to health care will be more impacted,” she said. 

It also could disproportionately impact high-risk Vermonters, who are the target of many Covid treatments such as Paxlovid. 

Sosin said the end of the emergency declaration said more about the deprioritization of Covid at a policy level than it did about where things are from a public health perspective.

“We need much more work done to lay the groundwork for this next phase of the pandemic… If we think that Covid is going to be with us for a long time, that means we need to build the systems to manage it into the future,” she said.

Correction: Due to incorrect information from the Agency of Human Services, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the timeline for Medicaid coverage for Covid testing and treatment without cost sharing.

Read the story on VTDigger here: End to national Covid-19 emergency order could affect Vermont’s tools to fight the disease.

A Vermont judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents of a student at Academy School in Brattleboro who received the Covid-19 vaccine against their wishes. 

At a November 2021 vaccination clinic at the Brattleboro school serving pre-K through sixth grade, the 6-year-old child was mistakenly given a Covid-19 shot after a reported name tag mix-up. 

The child’s parents, Dario and Shujen Politella, had not wanted their child vaccinated, and school officials apologized for the mistake.

“We are deeply sorry that this mistake happened, and have worked internally to improve our screening procedures,” Mark Speno, the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union school superintendent, wrote to parents after the incident. 

Six months later, in May 2022, the Politellas sued Windham Southeast and the Vermont state government.

The lawsuit accused school and state officials of negligence, fraud and “battery of a minor,” according to a judge’s summary of the complaint. 

The family members “have been traumatized, suffering mental anguish and additional educational expenses with the potential for future medical expenses,” the complaint said, according to the summary.

But Windham Superior Court Judge Michael Kainen dismissed the suit last month, ruling that federal law protects government officials from some lawsuits in the event of a public health emergency. 

The PREP Act, a 2005 law, shields from liability officials who are administering “countermeasures” in response to a public health emergency. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the law has been cited frequently amid litigation over Covid-19 protective measures. 

Because the Politellas “allege injury as a result of a countermeasure” and the PREP Act is “patently applicable to Plaintiffs’ stated claims,” the complaint must be dismissed,  Kainen wrote in a Dec. 26 ruling.

An attorney for the family did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday. Speno, the Windham Southeast superintendent, did not respond to a Tuesday afternoon email.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont judge dismisses suit over accidental Covid-19 vaccination.

A nonprofit health organization plans to hold a Covid-19 and flu vaccine clinic this weekend in downtown Burlington for Black, Indigenous and people of color in Vermont, as well as members of their households. 

The clinic, which is scheduled to take place at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul from 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday is sponsored by the Vermont Health Equity Initiative. It comes at a time when Covid and flu vaccine walk-in clinics across the state are winding down. The Vermont Department of Health recently announced plans to end all walk-in clinics by the end of January, due to lagging attendance. 

As of Thursday, according to the health department, 31% of Vermonters age 5 and older have received the bivalent Covid booster. State officials say 27% of BIPOC Vermont residents have received the booster.

In Chittenden County, the racial disparity in the vaccination rate is greater: 31% of the county’s BIPOC population has received the booster versus 39% of the non-Hispanic white population. 

The Vermont Health Equity Initiative held a series of BIPOC vaccine clinics in the early fall and on the first three Saturdays in December. Funded by the state Department of Health, these free Saturday clinics are meant to be an opportunity for BIPOC Vermonters who have to work during typical weekday clinic hours to receive a bivalent and/or flu vaccine. 

The vaccine clinics are “culturally affirming spaces that offer education and language interpretation resources for community members and their households,” according to the Health Equity Initiative website. No proof of insurance or identification is required to receive care. 

The Vermont Health Equity Initiative was founded in spring 2021 to partner with the state Department of Health and the Burlington city government in organizing and promoting BIPOC Covid vaccine clinics. Other local organizations — such as the Association for Africans Living in Vermont, Vermont Language Justice Project and Vermont Abenaki Artists Association — have also worked to educate traditionally marginalized communities in health care about the Covid vaccine. 

While state-funded walk-in clinics are winding down this month, community-run clinics such as those organized by the Health Equity Initiative will likely continue to provide the bivalent vaccine. The bivalent booster will also remain available through doctors’ offices and pharmacies.  

Saturday’s clinic will offer the bivalent vaccine to those age 5 and older and the flu vaccine to anyone under age 65. Appointments can be made here and walk-ins are welcome.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vaccine clinic for BIPOC Vermonters scheduled for Saturday in Burlington.

The state Department of Health plans to end walk-in Covid and flu vaccine clinics by Jan. 31.

The clinics have given out between 500,000 and 1 million Covid vaccine doses over the course of the pandemic, through multiple rounds of campaigns for different age groups and boosters, according to health department data.

But in an announcement on the health department website last month, officials said there hasn’t been enough attendance in recent months to keep clinics going during the most recent iteration of the vaccine, the bivalent booster dose, which targets the Omicron variant. 

“Demand is starting to peter off. We gave out about 20,000 doses of vaccine in the month of December, which is real, real low,” said Monica Ogelby, immunization program chief for the health department. 

Those low numbers come despite the health department expanding evening clinics right before the holidays to try to encourage more Vermonters to come out. “Not gonna lie, I was really hopeful that that would be the case,” she said.

Ogelby said the department also believes that the state is reaching the “tail end” of the optimal time to get vaccinated, since respiratory illnesses like Covid tend to follow a seasonal pattern.

“Really, people should be getting vaccinated earlier than the end of January in order to protect themselves and their loved ones and those around them,” Ogelby said. 

The vaccine will remain available through doctor’s offices and pharmacies along with some community-run clinics, like the health equity clinic, she said. Asked if the health department would consider restarting its walk-in clinics for future vaccination campaigns, she pointed to those other options.

“We have been maintaining this infrastructure of free clinics through our EMS partners, because we’ve always known that there’s something else on the horizon coming,” she said.

If the need arose for more walk-in clinics, “we absolutely, certainly could” set up new clinics, she said. “But the ongoing coordination, effort, expense, all of those things are very real at this point and the demand just doesn’t justify keeping it going for now.”

For Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher at Dartmouth College, the end of walk-in clinics is concerning because those clinics have filled geographic gaps in remote areas and relieved pressure on the health system, which has been “battered” by the need for Covid vaccinations and treatments, and has struggled with staffing. 

She also said commercial pharmacies were an imperfect substitute for walk-in clinics. Vermont accused Walgreens pharmacies of unsafe conditions in June due to low staffing and frequent medication errors.

“Public health campaigns reliant on a fragmented private health system that is not well distributed geographically tend to produce inequitable access and outcomes,” Sosin said via email. 

At the same time, she praised the department for keeping walk-in clinics open as long as it has. Many other states shut down vaccine clinics in 2022 and did not bring them back for the bivalent booster, she said. 

As of Dec. 28, about 31% of Vermonters 5 and older have received the bivalent booster, according to the health department. That’s far lower than the 80% of all Vermonters who got the primary vaccine series — but higher than the national bivalent booster rate of 15%.

Sosin said she’d hoped that older Vermonters, in particular, would have higher rates of vaccine uptake. As a new subvariant, XBB, overtakes other strains, “we really should push a little harder to close those gaps,” she said.

The new strain is unlikely to cause a surge as bad as the Omicron wave that overtook the state last January, but Sosin said she would expect at least a moderate increase in hospitalizations over the next few weeks.

As of last Wednesday, Covid community levels in the state were “low,” but flu levels were “very high,” the department reported.

In addition to getting vaccinated, Sosin advised Vermonters to use tools like masking and testing strategically in the coming weeks to prevent transmission. 

“We need to toe the line between extremes of carelessness and over-concern,” she said. “Now is a really good time, particularly as kids head back to school, for us to revive some of the tools” used earlier in the pandemic, such as short periods of masking in schools.

The closure of walk-in clinics also comes amid changes in the federal Covid strategy that could “commercialize” vaccinations, making it harder for uninsured Vermonters to afford Covid vaccines.

Ogelby said uninsured Vermonters should contact their local federally qualified health center, rural health center, or Planned Parenthood to get low- or no-cost vaccinations. The federal government also offers a lookup tool for vaccine providers here. 

Looking back on two years of Covid vaccination campaigns, Ogelby said the biggest lesson she’d learned was the importance of building partnerships with health equity groups who “really rallied to help us work with populations that we’ve previously not served.”

In the earliest months of the pandemic, BIPOC Vermonters had a far lower vaccination rate than non-Hispanic white Vermonters, department data showed. Its data now shows that gap has narrowed or even reversed for different age groups.

Many local organizations — such as the Association for Africans in Vermont, the Vermont Language Justice Project and the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association — worked to build trust and educate marginalized communities about the vaccine, she said. 

“There’s been so much work that has been way above and beyond just like ‘here, population fill-in-the-blank, we’re gonna send a crew of EMS to your location with vaccines,’” she said. “That’s something we eventually figured out how to do well, but we’re gonna have to keep working at it.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Monica Ogelby’s name.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s walk-in Covid vaccination clinics to close by end of month.

Vermont’s statewide Covid-19 levels hit “medium” last week, the state Department of Health reported Wednesday, marking the first time the state has been above “low” levels since June.

According to the department’s weekly surveillance report, the higher rating was based on the number of hospital admissions for the disease, which rose to 73, or 11.7 per 100,000 people, in the past week. That’s the highest rate of hospital admissions reported since mid-May. A rate exceeding 10 hospital admissions per 100,000 people triggers the department’s “medium” designation.

Similarly, the number of people currently in the hospital with Covid reached 66 on Wednesday, the most Covid patients the state has reported since May. That includes six intensive care patients, about in line with recent weeks.

​​The department said that a seasonal increase in Covid is not unexpected, while urging people to get the Covid bivalent booster, which targets the Omicron strain of the virus currently dominating the state. 

“Freely available bivalent booster vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying,” the department said on its website along with the report.

The department has not released data on the bivalent booster campaign so far in October. As of Sept. 29, about 26,000 doses had been distributed, trailing previous vaccination campaigns.

Covid cases, based primarily on PCR tests, have also risen but more moderately. The department reported 662 cases in the past week, compared with 623 the week before. The state averaged between 400 and 600 cases per week over the summer.

Covid cases and hospitalizations remain low at a national level, but nearby states have also reported recent increases, according to The New York Times. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts have reported the biggest rise in hospitalizations in the past two weeks.

BA.5 remains the predominant Covid variant in the New England region, but it appears to be declining, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other subvariants of Omicron such as BF.7 made up about 30% of recent samples.

Using the same criteria as the health department, the CDC rated four Vermont counties — Orleans, Lamoille, Caledonia and Rutland — as having “medium” Covid levels as of Thursday, while Bennington had “high” Covid levels. The rest of the state had low levels.

The CDC recommends that high-risk people in medium-level counties take action to protect themselves, such as wearing a mask. In high-level counties, it recommends that the general public take action to prevent the spread of Covid.

The health department added six new Covid deaths to its data, bringing October’s total to eight so far. In total, 734 people have died of Covid in Vermont since the beginning of the pandemic. 

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Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s Covid levels rise to ‘medium’ amid increase in hospital visits.

About 26,000 Vermonters have gotten the Omicron booster, putting the state on a slower pace than previous booster campaigns, according to data from the state Department of Health.

Vermont pharmacies, health providers and walk-in clinics began offering the booster, also called the bivalent vaccine, to the general population three weeks ago. In 2021, more than 100,000 people got the booster in the first three weeks after Vermont opened eligibility to high-risk people and people 65 and older.

Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher at Dartmouth College, said it was still “relatively early” in the campaign, especially since people who have recently contracted Covid are recommended to wait until their immunity wears off.

But she said there were “reasons for concern” about the slow uptake, given that the United States has had “increasing incoherence in (its) Covid response.”

In a “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month, President Joe Biden said the pandemic was “over,” leading to criticism from some public health experts and officials.

“There’s been consistent refrains that the pandemic is over, that Covid represents a low risk, and so many don’t really see the reason to get boosted at this moment in time,” Sosin said. “We really need an active effort to counter that messaging.”

Vermont isn’t the only state that has struggled with its latest booster campaign: Less than 2% of eligible Americans got the shot in the first three weeks of the rollout, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The bivalent booster dose targets the Omicron strain along with older strains of the virus. Experts say it provides increased protection against the variants currently circulating throughout the country.

Sosin pointed out that not only does the vaccine defend against severe outcomes — like hospitalization and death — but it could play a role in limiting the virus’ disruption of schools, workplaces and communities when Vermonters get sick.

“While older populations will incur the most health benefits, there are real reasons for young people to boost this fall,” Sosin said. 

Almost half of the bivalent vaccine recipients were Vermonters 65 and older, health department data shows. 

Recent vaccine campaigns have seen lower and lower uptake, both for boosters and for the newly eligible group of young children. Before the bivalent vaccine became available, only 37% of Vermonters were up-to-date on their vaccines, including recommended booster doses, according to the health department vaccine dashboard.

Monica Ogleby, chief of the immunization program at the health department, said the number of bivalent boosters was in line with their expectations, given the “pretty consistent trend” that as “new vaccines come out, the uptick in demand might look a little bit different, a little bit lower each time.”

They are still “assuming, hoping (and) planning” for about 50 to 60% of eligible Vermonters to eventually get the bivalent booster, she said. 

In June, the health department announced it would close most of its mass vaccination clinics and shut down its appointment portal, instead favoring walk-in clinics. The department’s data shows that Vermonters are taking advantage of them: About 56% of bivalent vaccinations performed so far were at EMS-run clinics across the state.

“We basically just shifted the resources to be more flexible to meet the community needs,” Olgeby said.

Starting last week, state-run clinics also offer the flu vaccine for people under 65 years old alongside Covid vaccinations. Ogleby said 650 people had gotten the flu vaccine at clinics so far, with another 25,000 people receiving the flu vaccine at other locations like pharmacies.

About 37% of bivalent Covid boosters were administered at pharmacies, with the rest performed at doctor’s offices, hospitals and congregate facilities, department data shows.

Sosin pointed out that the state’s reliance on pharmacies for vaccinations comes at a time of serious staffing shortages for many major chains. When she got vaccinated in the Northeast Kingdom in early September, she said, employees told her that the pharmacy had been closed for the previous nine days because of staffing issues.

“​​Layering vaccination on to a fragmented, private, commercial pharmacy system that’s already functioning unevenly is really not a formula for success,” she said. “We really do need state run clinics to ensure that everyone has access to boosters right now.”

For more information about the bivalent booster, check out VTDigger’s frequently asked questions about the booster or the health department website.

Read the story on VTDigger here: With 26,000 shots given out, Vermont’s Omicron booster rollout trails previous campaigns.

Covid-19 levels in Vermont remain “low,” according to the Vermont Department of Health’s latest weekly surveillance update.

The department reported 445 cases in the past week, down from 494 the week before. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rated only two Vermont counties — Bennington and Rutland — as having “medium” Covid levels on Thursday.

There were 37 new Covid hospital admissions in the past week, a slight increase from 35 the week before. 

No deaths from Covid have been reported so far in September. Because of the delay in processing death certificates, the health department often takes days or weeks to update death data. Nineteen people died in August, 12 people died in July, 12 people died in June and 32 people died in May. 

With students back in schools throughout the state, Vermont had an uptick in outbreaks in educational settings, according to the report. As of Sept. 13, there were 17 active outbreaks in a school or child care facility throughout the state, up from two the previous week. The surveillance report defines an outbreak as three or more epidemiologically linked cases of Covid-19.

Health officials and doctors continue to urge eligible Vermonters to get the recent vaccine booster targeted at the newer subvariants of the Omicron strain. VTDigger has answered reader questions about the Omicron vaccine here. The health department also has more details about the vaccine on its website.

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Read the story on VTDigger here: Covid levels remain ‘low’ in Vermont as students are back to school.

Updated at 4:06 p.m.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Covid-19 booster shots from Pfizer and Moderna on Wednesday that are targeted to the newest variants of the virus.

The Department of Health plans to start distributing an initial shipment of 17,000 doses on Sept. 6 or 7, assuming that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approves it later this week, said department spokesperson Ben Truman.

Vermont state epidemiologist Patsy Kelso told Vermont Public on Tuesday that boosters will be available at pharmacies and doctor’s offices.

The new shots contain viral material from SARS-CoV-2’s original strain as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, the FDA reported, giving people who get it “increased protection against the currently circulating omicron variant.”

Anyone 12 years and older is eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, while the Moderna vaccine is only available to those 18 years and older, the agency reported.

This is the second booster dose the FDA has made eligible to the general public, after authorizing the first booster dose in 2021. It recommended another booster dose in March for high-risk people and people 50 years and older.

When asked if the new boosters would also be available at the state’s remaining walk-in clinics, Truman said information specific to that would be posted soon on the department’s website.

Read the story on VTDigger here: FDA backs Omicron-based booster, paving the way for shots in Vermont next week.

Vermont reported “low” Covid levels in the health department’s latest weekly report. Cases, hospital admissions and the percent of hospital beds in use for Covid remained low in the past week, the department said.

But there is one metric on the rise as of Wednesday: The state hit 47 patients hospitalized for Covid on Wednesday morning, the highest number since the end of May, according to the state database. It also reported a higher-than-average 40 patients on Monday.

The department’s report runs from August 14 to August 20, so it doesn’t reflect the latest uptick in hospitalizations. The state only releases hospitalization data for three days a week, making it hard to say if the recent high hospitalization counts reflect a consistent trend.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also rated 12 of Vermont’s 14 counties as having “low” Covid levels, while Rutland and Bennington counties had “medium” Covid levels.

The CDC and health department base their Covid levels on cases, hospital admissions and the percent of hospital beds taken up by Covid patients. The CDC advises high-risk residents in medium-level counties to take measures to protect themselves from Covid, such as wearing a mask.

The health department reported 517 Covid cases in the past week, compared with 451 the week before. Case data is based primarily on PCR tests, while at-home antigen tests are not usually included.

The department also reported three additional deaths this week, for a total of 11 so far in August, compared to 12 in July. In total, 707 people have died of Covid since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

Vaccine update

A week before Vermont children begin going back to school, less than half of school-aged children are up-to-date on recommended Covid vaccines, department data shows.

About 15% of children 5 to 11 years old have received all recommended doses, including the booster, the department reported. About 41% of 12- to 17-year-olds have received their recommended doses of the vaccine.

That’s compared to 52% of 5- to 11-year-olds, and 72% of 12- to 17-year-olds, that completed their primary course of the Covid vaccine, meaning the two initial shots of Pfizer or Moderna, according to the department.

Including older age brackets, the rates are a little higher: 83% of all Vermonters 5 and older have completed their primary course, and 37% are up-to-date on recommended booster doses.

Boosters are recommended for 5- to 11-year-olds who completed a Pfizer primary vaccine series at least five months ago. Shots are available at doctors’ offices, pharmacies and walk-in clinics.
The Biden administration has announced plans to vaccinate all Americans 12 and older soon after Labor Day with boosters that target specific subvariants of the Omicron strain, The New York Times reported. Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna have applied to the federal Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization for the shots.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Covid levels ‘low,’ health department reports, but hospitalizations are up.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve seen the news coverage stating many Vermont parents are not getting their small children vaccinated against Covid. It turns out the actual story is more complicated. 

The Vermont Department of Health has been recommending to parents that they take their child to the pediatrician to get vaccinated. This is good practice — a familiar and safe environment, a trusted care provider who knows the family and can provide education and follow-up.

My daughter and son-in-law took their two-and-a-half-year-old son to his excellent and genuinely caring pediatrician at the Ottauquechee Health Center in Woodstock three weeks ago for his well child visit and Covid vaccine, which would allow him to finally meet his great-grandparents in person. When they got to the appointment, they were told the clinic wasn’t vaccinating young children for Covid because they “didn’t have their database set up” to be able to administer the vaccine. They were told they would get a phone call when the vaccine became available to children in that age group. (Incidentally, the vaccine was released for young children in the United States in mid-June.)

Time went by but no phone call came to schedule the vaccine. Worrying that a phone message might have gotten lost in the busyness of life with a toddler, I called the health center to inquire. The secretary told me the clinic, an affiliate of Dartmouth Health, still didn’t have the computer system set up, and she had no idea when to expect it to be set up, although she thought more information (about the computer system, not the vaccine) might be available at the end of this week. Meanwhile, they were directing families to the Vermont Department of Health website.

“But the health department website tells people to contact their child’s pediatrician!” I protested. She wore me down before I wore her down: I got off the phone and went to healthvermont.gov, navigating to “Covid vaccine age 6 months to 5 years.” As I expected, this produced a list of pediatric offices (including the clinic I’d just been on the phone with) as well as the White River Junction district office of the Department of Health. 

When I dialed the number for the WRJ district office, I was connected to someone in Burlington! That person told me the Health Department has heard similar accounts from families about other pediatric offices around the state, and said she’d pass my concern on to her supervisor. I also encouraged her to contact the press, as this runaround might be one of the reasons so few young children in Vermont have been vaccinated against Covid just a few weeks before the start of school.

The helpful person in Burlington transferred the call to a helpful person at the WRJ district office of the health department, who suggested attending a walk-in clinic in Hartford later this week or one in Woodstock next week. He thought the walk-in clinic would be able to vaccinate a two year old. (I’m less confident, but we’ll see — a busy clinic in a strange place isn’t an ideal environment for toddler health care.) He didn’t know anything about the pediatric list on the same website. If the parents couldn’t take more time off from work to make one of the two walk-in clinics, he suggested they could take their toddler to Essex or to Springfield or “wherever was most convenient for them.” 

I don’t know if most parents of infants, toddlers and preschoolers are as persistent — or as unambivalent about the Covid vaccine — as a grandmother with time on her hands (“and a bad attitude,” my husband adds) whose early career involved newspaper reporting. But even if they are — and even if they have the time, which working parents of little kids generally don’t — it’s not fair to put them through this kind of obstacle course just to access a vaccine the state says everyone should get but some parents have mixed feelings about. 

Make it easy to access, and people who are on the fence about the whole idea may go ahead and get their kids vaccinated. Make it hard and time-consuming, and even busy parents who are motivated to get the vaccine may just walk away. Most of all, go the second mile — make the effort, if someone is trying to get their kid vaccinated against Covid, don’t end the encounter until there is a clear and workable plan for vaccination.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Victoria Rhodin: Why Vermont’s young kids aren’t getting the Covid vaccine.

Vermont’s Covid-19 levels remained “low” in the past week, according to the state Department of Health, even as the nation continues to face a surge driven by the BA.5 subvariant.

In its latest weekly surveillance report, the health department reported 493 Covid cases in the past week, about the same as the week before. But Covid-related hospital admissions and the share of hospital beds taken up by Covid patients ticked up this week, even while both remained within the “low” category.

There were 49 new admissions for Covid in the past week, up from 33 the week before, according to health department reports. About 2.7% of beds statewide were taken up by Covid patients, which other data sources from the department show include about three to six intensive care patients at any one time.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported last week that most of Vermont’s 14 counties had “low” Covid levels, with only Rutland and Bennington counties reporting “medium” Covid levels.

The CDC and health department Covid levels are determined by the recent case rate, hospital admissions, and beds occupied by Covid patients. The CDC recommends that high-risk people in medium-level counties take steps to protect themselves from the virus, including wearing masks in public.

Vermont has the lowest Covid case rate and the lowest hospitalization rate in the nation, according to New York Times data. Southern states such as Kentucky have the highest rates at this time.
While Vermont’s case data is most likely an undercount, since the state relies on PCR tests for its data reporting, the rest of the country is affected by that issue, too. Vermont has a PCR test positivity rate of 8%, compared to a national average of 19%, according to The Times — suggesting that the national case count is not representative of the full picture of Covid.

Vermont has not reported a new Covid death in nearly two weeks, according to the health department. In total, 693 people have died of Covid in Vermont since the beginning of the pandemic, including nine so far in July. 

The number of Covid deaths is based on death certificates that list Covid as a cause or probable cause of death, according to the health department. Because of the time it takes to investigate deaths and prepare death certificates, deaths can sometimes be added retroactively, raising the total for previous weeks and months.

Vaccine updates

Only 37% of Vermonters 5 and older are up-to-date on their vaccinations, the health department reported Wednesday, using updated benchmarks.

The state’s apparent vaccination rate dropped in the latest health department dashboard update, but that’s not because people became unvaccinated. Rather, the department updated its data to reflect the latest booster recommendations from the CDC.

The CDC recommends that everyone over age 17 receive at least one booster dose of the vaccine, and everyone 50 and older should receive a second booster dose, according to the health department website. Children 5 and older who received the Pfizer vaccine should receive a booster dose as well.

The department’s old definition, which did not include second boosters or boosters for children, said 59% of those 5 and older were up-to-date.

The booster rate for 5- to 11-year-olds was particularly low: Only 13% of children in that age group have received their recommended vaccine doses, including boosters, the health department reported. People ages 50 to 59 also had a large gap between their initial completion rate of 83% and their booster rate of 16%.

The health department has not yet added children under 5 to its vaccine dashboard. The department told VTDigger last week that 13% of children in that age group had started the vaccination process as of late July.

Vermont has scaled back its state-run vaccine clinics this summer, but walk-in clinics are still listed on the health department website. Doctor’s offices and pharmacies also offer Covid vaccines.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s Covid levels ‘low’ but state’s booster progress is falling behind.

Covid-19 vaccines were everywhere in the spring of 2021.

Nearly one year ago, Gov. Phil Scott lifted major Covid restrictions on businesses and gatherings as the state hit a 80% vaccination rate, the key benchmark of his “Vermont Forward” strategy. 

To hit that goal and surpass it, the state hosted appointment-based vaccine clinics at health care centers, EMS headquarters and pharmacies. Businesses and community organizations held walk-in vaccine clinics at shopping centers and farmers markets — even on the beach. 

The state has since navigated record-breaking Covid cases and several variants of the virus. In the midst of a receding Omicron surge in February, Health Commissioner Mark Levine announced a new Vermont strategy: treating Covid as an “endemic” disease.

To that end, Levine said in March that Vermont would roll back its state-run vaccination clinics. Instead, the vaccine would be available through pharmacies, health care providers and a smaller number of walk-in clinics run by the state. 

At the same time, the state’s progress on the more recent waves of booster shots and vaccinations for the youngest eligible age group has not kept pace with the early days of the vaccine rollout. About 71,000 eligible Vermonters — those age 5 and older — have yet to receive their first dose of the vaccine. Only 59% of eligible Vermonters are up-to-date on all recommended booster doses, according to the health department.

Children 5 to 11 years old, who became eligible for vaccination in the fall of 2021, have the lowest vaccination rate of any age group, the health department reports. As of June 8, about 61% have started the vaccination process.

White House officials said last week that they believe vaccines for children 6 months to 5 years old could be available as soon as June 21, assuming that federal agencies approve the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines on schedule. 

If that timeline holds, it would mark the first time a new age group becomes eligible without a state-run vaccination program in place. Instead, the health department plans to send vaccine doses through a patchwork system of pediatricians, health clinics and a few state-backed clinics, said Monica Ogelby, the immunization program chief for the department.

Dr. Leah Costello, a pediatrician in South Burlington, is one provider gearing up for the news. 

“Vaccinations are what pediatricians do best,” she said. “This is our job. This is what we do all the time.”

Most parents, she said, prefer to have their children receive their vaccines through their central health care provider, what Costello referred to as their “medical home.” 

“We just always knew that it was pretty unlikely a family was going to want to take their young toddler to the pharmacy, for example,” she said. 

Pharmacies are also able to vaccinate children only if they’re 3 and older, Ogelby said, so there hasn’t been “a ton of excitement” around pharmacies signing up to get doses of the vaccine for young children.

But Costello cautioned that her office was relatively short-staffed, and the latest vaccination round is an “added demand” to an already busy schedule. 

Some parents are already reporting difficulties in finding appointments for their children over 5 years old to get a booster, particularly in rural regions. Melissa Mikesell, a parent in East Burke with a 10-year-old child, told VTDigger she couldn’t find any open slots at local pharmacies or the closest pediatricians in Wells River.

“The only pediatrician’s office I found that had the booster would have required us to book a new patient appointment before she could get the shot, so it would be weeks,” she said via email.

After contemplating traveling all the way to Waterbury for a spot, she was ultimately able to find a walk-in clinic in Bradford, “but it was a process,” she wrote. 

“Plenty of kids in schools near us are getting infected right now, so I feel an urgency to get her booster ASAP,” she wrote. “I just worry people who don’t have the resources to do the legwork and to drive more than an hour away won’t get boosted!”

Experts have previously raised concerns about the lack of Covid testing, vaccination and treatment in rural areas. When Vermont announced plans to close state-run testing sites in favor of provider-based testing, Anne Sosin, a health equity researcher at Dartmouth College, said that the state expected people to “jump through hoops” to find new testing providers.

Dr. Alex Bannach, a pediatrician in Newport, said her practice had pushed hard to provide additional access for local parents, holding vaccination drives and discussing the vaccine with parents during appointments. The office has set aside two afternoons each week for people to come to the practice for the vaccine.

When the vaccine was released, “parents were traveling up here to get their children vaccinated because they couldn’t find any clinics that were available to them in the greater Burlington area,” Bannach said.

At the same time, she can understand why parents may be having a hard time finding open appointments with some providers. “There’s still a shortage of physicians,” as well as nurses and other health care workers, she said.

Ogelby, from the health department, said the state’s plan to distribute vaccines through providers’ offices prioritized “populations disproportionately impacted by Covid,” such as people of color.

The state also plans to distribute doses based on each office’s history of vaccinating children and the number of children at the practice, she said. But at this point, the state “can’t really predict” how much demand there will be for the vaccine for young children.

National research indicates that only 20% of this age group might get vaccinated, but “Vermont tends to be culturally more vaccine-affirming, and excited” for the vaccine, she said.

Costello anticipated that demand might not be “quite as high” as for previous vaccines.

“Unfortunately, most families have had Covid this winter,” meaning that many think they have immunity to the disease, she said. “I think there is going to be an urgency, but I don’t see it quite to the level that it was when the vaccine for the 5- to 11-year-olds came out.”

The health department also plans to make the vaccine available at WIC offices and local health departments. Local organizations such as schools, libraries or community organizations can also sign up to host vaccine clinics, Ogelby said.

Families that don’t have a go-to health care provider for their child can call the health department office in their district for help finding the vaccine, she said.

“There are parts of the state where we know it’s at least a 30-minute drive to a pharmacy or a primary care provider,” she said. The state has tried to fill that gap with EMS teams, she said, but “that’s not to say that it’s not necessarily going to be happening on the day at the moment when that family might need access to vaccine.”

Responding to the lack of a centralized system for finding vaccine appointments, she said “the community is retaking control over the health care system” while the health department bridges the gap with walk-in clinics. 

“I can completely see how it doesn’t feel like it’s necessarily the same type of one-stop shopping, where maybe it did feel when the state was managing soup to nuts,” she said.

A different type of barrier remains for raising the vaccination rate for children: Parents’ reluctance to get their kids vaccinated. 

Costello said that educating parents on vaccines is something she does “day in and day out.” 

“I meet the family where they’re at: Asking about what their questions are, what their hesitations are, because it can be so totally different for people,” she said.

Costello can also draw on personal experience as a parent to three. 

“I just really tell parents I would never recommend anything that I wouldn’t do for my own children, and my 6- and 10-year-old got vaccinated the day it came out, and my 3-year-old will get vaccinated as well,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the status of testing sites. Due to an editing error, a reference to Waterbury in Melissa Mikesell’s story was omitted.

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Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont may soon get Covid vaccines for young children. Are we ready for it?.

About four months ago, Vermont schools reopened after a break to find themselves swamped with Covid-19.

As students returned after winter break in early January, Vermont schools struggled to hold classes amid a surge in cases. Faced with staffing shortages and students out sick, many closed their buildings just days after reopening. 

“Things are terrible,” Emily Hecker, a spokesperson for the Winooski School District, said at the time.

Fast-forward to last week. Students returned from spring break amid another rise in Covid-19 cases. School mask mandates are a thing of the past. And, after state officials ended Covid-19 testing programs in schools, many students are not getting tested for the virus, administrators say.

Attitudes around the virus in schools appear to have undergone a dramatic change in the past three months. In interviews or in messages, administrators around the state described school communities that were no longer preoccupied with Covid-19 — in some cases, despite rising case counts and fears that the virus is spreading undetected. 

“Honestly, on a daily basis right now, I’m not hearing a lot of talk about Covid,” said Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified School District. “It seems like it’s just being treated like the flu, or any other nasty cold virus that we have going around.”

“It’s kind of business as usual in our district right now,” she added. 

According to state data, Covid-19 cases in Vermont children ticked up slightly in April. But some believe that cases reported by schools and the state represent only a fraction of the real number.  

State officials stopped collecting Covid-19 case data in schools in January. And in early April, the state Agency of Education halted organized Covid-19 testing programs in Vermont schools, shifting the responsibility for reporting the results of at-home Covid-19 tests to parents. 

By all accounts, the virus in Vermont is not nearly as severe as it was in January, when the state reported thousands of cases a day, shattering records.

Many more children have also been vaccinated over the course of this school year. Those ages 5 to 11 became eligible for initial doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine last November, and those ages 12 to 15 have been eligible for booster doses since January. 

Recent data released by the Vermont Agency of Education showed that, as of March 22, 64% of public school students ages 5 and up have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, although local figures vary widely. 

Administrators in some school districts and supervisory unions said that they are seeing few Covid cases in their schools, and some have stopped tallying cases or informing parents about every new positive test. 

“We are not formally tracking,” David Baker, the superintendent of Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, said in an email. “Our numbers are good.”

But some districts and supervisory unions have reported Covid-19 bumps.

Last week, the Harwood Unified Union School District reported 117 Covid cases in schools for the month of April, more than twice March’s figure and the highest monthly count since January. 

In the Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District, administrators recorded 72 cases in the first two weeks of April, nearly twice the 38 reported in the last two weeks of March. Last week, the first week after students returned from spring break, the district reported another 25 cases in schools.

Both Harwood Union and Mount Mansfield are among the most highly vaccinated districts in the state, according to the data from late March. At least 80% of eligible students in both districts have gotten two shots. 

In the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union, administrators reported a roughly four-fold increase in Covid-19 cases across nine schools, a career center, and the supervisory union’s central office ahead of spring break. 

Lynn Cota, the superintendent of Franklin Northeast, said that the district is contending with both an increase in Covid cases and a separate flu-like condition.

“We have just returned from April vacation, so I don’t really have a sense of where we are right now,” Cota said in a text message.

But, she noted, “My perception is that people are transitioning to a place where they understand that there are many exposures in the community and that it is something we’ll need to learn to live with in the coming years.”

In some districts and supervisory unions, administrators said that families and staff have lost interest in testing, even though schools are well-stocked with rapid tests and give them out for free.

“We suspect there are a lot of people not even reporting anything,” said John Castle, the superintendent of North Country Supervisory Union. “Because they’re either not testing or, even if they are testing, they’re doing take-home tests, and may be choosing not to report depending on how symptomatic they are.”

Anne Sosin, a public health researcher and policy fellow at Dartmouth College, cast doubt on state and school data.

“I think we have very high transmission in the state, but we’re only seeing a fraction of the cases,” Sosin said, noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday identified seven Vermont counties as having high Covid-19 transmission. 

But messaging from state and federal authorities — including changing CDC guidance and state officials urging schools to drop mask mandates — are effectively telling people to relax, Sosin said.

“I’d really like to see very transparent communication about the level of transmission in communities,” she said. “Some would shift their choices right now if they knew how high transmission was and what getting infected might mean.”

Sosin later said via email that she has “heard more accounts of higher risk individuals being infected during the last month than I have at any point of the pandemic.” 

Nevertheless, many school administrators described school environments in which staff and families were much more relaxed.

Becca McCray, the president of the Vermont State School Nurses Association, said that Covid transmission in schools was simply mirroring that in the rest of the state.

“As cases go up in the community, yes, Covid cases will go up in the schools,” McCray said. “But it’s at a very micro level that that’s happening.”

In the Burlington School District, where McCray works, many are no longer anxious about the virus, she said. 

“Coming back from April break, the focus isn’t on Covid,” she said. “It’s on, ‘Oh my gosh, there are only six weeks of school left.’”

Adam Rosenberg, the superintendent of Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union, said in an interview that his schools were “definitely” seeing an uptick in Covid cases last week. But that increase has caused little anxiety for many families, he said. 

“There’s definitely some pandemic fatigue setting in,” he said. “I don’t hear a lot from families the way I used to.”

In Winooski, where conditions were “terrible” in early January, the atmosphere is beginning to feel like “a post-pandemic time,” said Hecker, the district spokesperson.

“People are able to socialize again, people are able to travel again, we’re allowed to have volunteers in the building again,” she said. “I think that’s probably giving people a sense of normal life resuming.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Some schools reported increases in Covid-19 cases in April. Not everyone is worried about it..

On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of the second booster dose of Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for people 50 and older and people with compromised immune systems.

That booster is now available to all eligible Vermonters, according to Vermont Department of Health spokesperson Ben Truman. But there have been several changes since the first booster dose was rolled out last year.

Vermont has wound down most of its state-run vaccine clinics, instead telling Vermonters to get vaccinated at pharmacies and doctor’s offices. There’s also new evidence to consider about the effectiveness of the second booster and who should receive it. 

Which dose is this, exactly?

For most Vermonters, the second Pfizer or Moderna booster would be the fourth dose they’ve received. 

The first and second doses, received about three to four weeks apart, complete the initial vaccine course. Pfizer or Moderna recipients become eligible for one booster shot five months later. Now, the FDA has approved a second booster shot at least four months after the first booster shot.

The exception is people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which only requires one dose for the initial course, then a booster two months later. Those patients can opt to get the Pfizer or Moderna booster even if they received Johnson & Johnson first, according to the health department.

Immunocompromised Vermonters are also eligible for an “additional dose” after their initial vaccine course and before their booster shot, according to the health department.

Where can I get it?

There are three options for finding a Covid vaccine: doctor’s offices, pharmacies and state-run clinics. 

There’s no centralized database of doctor’s offices that carry the vaccine. The health department encourages Vermonters to reach out to “your health care provider.” 

You can search for a pharmacy that provides vaccinations through vaccines.gov, a federal website. Among the pharmacy chains in Vermont with vaccine availability are Kinney Drugs, Walgreens and Rite-Aid, according to the site.

The handful of remaining state clinics are walk-in only, with no appointments required. The health department has a list of those clinics on its website.

Is it worth it to get the second booster dose?

In its approval of the second booster shot, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that people 50 and older were eligible to get the shot, but the agency stopped short of actually recommending it.

Tim Lahey, an infectious disease physician at the University of Vermont Medical Center, said he is “most convinced that people who are immunocompromised (or) over 60 can benefit from getting a fourth shot.” For others, it’s more complicated.

“It's a little more discretionary if you're in your 50s,” he said. “It probably depends on what your what your medical conditions are, what medicines you're taking, or your personal sense of what your approach is” toward the risk of contracting Covid.

Research showed clear evidence that the first booster dose limited the risk of infection, hospitalization and death, Lahey said. 

For the second booster, the strongest research suggests that it protects people 60 and older against hospitalization, but studies have not confirmed significant protection against severe disease for people younger than 60. Lahey said he is waiting for more data to come out of Israel, an early adopter of the fourth dose.

He recommended that people who are on the fence about getting the second booster talk to their health care provider to have a more nuanced conversation about their risk level from Covid and their individual benefits from getting the next dose.

If I got Johnson & Johnson, should I get Pfizer or Moderna now?

After a wave of early evidence that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not as effective as Pfizer or Moderna, which are both mRNA vaccines, the federal government approved people choosing a different type of vaccine for their booster shot. 

That means that if you got the one dose of Johnson & Johnson, you can get Pfizer or Moderna as your booster shot. Or, if you got the initial dose and the booster dose of Johnson & Johnson, you can now opt to get Pfizer or Moderna as your second booster dose.

Lahey said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is still considered very effective at preventing hospitalization and death. Now that mRNA vaccines are less effective against preventing infection in the latest variants, the differences between the vaccines are a “little subtler,” he said.

At the same time, there’s some evidence that mixing and matching vaccines can bolster your immune response. Lahey said if he had gotten Johnson & Johnson as his initial vaccine, he would opt for an mRNA vaccine now.

“There's so many combinations that it’s gonna take a long time” to get precise answers on which one to get when, Lahey said. It may also take a while to figure out how often the general public will need to get boosters, and what kind they’ll need.

“The unanswered question is, how many shots do you need?” he said. “I suspect that's going to get folded into this as-yet-unanswered question of whether the virus is going to mutate enough so that we need yearly boosters.”

Correction: An earlier version of the graphic in this article misstated the age of eligibility for the Moderna vaccine.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Getting a 2nd Covid booster: What you need to know.

Vermont plans to wind down its state-run Covid-19 vaccine clinics, relying on health care providers and pharmacies to give out the vaccines from now on, officials said at a press conference Tuesday.

“Most people have had plenty of opportunity to be vaccinated, and … the use of our statewide vaccine clinics at the present time is very low,” Health Commissioner Mark Levine said. “This gives us the opportunity to make getting your Covid vaccine more like other vaccines that you can get from your health care provider or pharmacy.”

Pharmacies have given out the Covid jab since the very start of the vaccination program in December 2020, and health care providers began receiving vaccine shipments from the state in the summer of 2021. 

However, the state-run clinics have been a key benchmark of the program, at times offering dozens of clinics throughout Vermont each week. The Vermont government-held clinics at popular shopping sites, schools, workplaces and EMS stations, as well as events focused on the BIPOC community and rural regions of the state.

About 87% of eligible Vermonters 5 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Department of Health. About 59% of Vermonters are up-to-date on their recommended vaccines, including the booster dose.

Jenney Samuelson, the interim secretary for the Agency of Human Services, said state-run clinics likely would cease around mid-April.

Levine said primary care providers are the only locations that have seen a recent increase in doses administered. “Care providers play a crucial role in being a trusted resource for patients who may have questions or just need reassurance from a medical professional,” he said.

When vaccines are finally offered for children under 5 years old, Levine said, they will only be available through pediatricians and family practitioners. “When the time comes, you will make an appointment through your clinician’s office rather than through the health department registration system,” he said.

However, 14% of Vermont adults did not have a personal doctor or health care provider in 2019, according to Kaiser Family Foundation. The Biden Administration also recently announced that providers will no longer be reimbursed for providing vaccines, testing or Covid treatment to uninsured people unless Congress plugs a funding hole.

Levine said Vermont would continue to provide vaccine access to people without providers through “small community clinics.”

Gov. Phil Scott said Vermont’s Covid programs would be “OK” for now despite the loss of federal funding, but it was an issue that could affect them “in the not too distant future.”

“They should come together and provide more funding because as I’ve said, it’s not as though this is over. We’re going to see variants in the future,” Scott said.

Levine said Vermont would be prepared to ramp up its vaccination efforts if the situation changed — for example, if another vaccine was offered for a new variant. 

“Should there be some unforeseen circumstance that develops with the virus — which won’t be just here in Vermont, it’ll be all across the country —  … we’re poised to stand things up again,” he said.

Vermont has also recently shifted how it provides testing at state-run test sites. Instead of mostly providing PCR tests, the state sites now offer at-home antigen test kits on appointment.

BA.2 pushes cases upward

The Covid strategy changes come amid the state’s first rise in Covid cases since the Omicron surge ebbed in January — although infections remain far below that dramatic peak.

The seven-day Covid case average rose about 14% this week compared with the last, according to the latest Department of Financial Regulation report which includes the state’s modeling data. The health department reported about 141 new cases per day this week, including 77 cases on Tuesday. That’s compared to 1,800 cases per day at the height of Omicron in January.

That means Vermont ranks fourth-highest in the nation for its Covid case rate, according to The New York Times. On the other hand, it has the second-lowest rate of hospitalization in the country.

The rise in new infections appears to be driven by the BA.2 subvariant, a close cousin of the Omicron variant that is about 1.4 to 1.6 times more infectious than Omicron, Levine said. Like the Omicron variant, the BA.2 subvariant is fairly mild, and vaccines are effective against it. 

According to new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, about 55% of Covid-19 cases in New England are from the BA.2 subvariant, compared to about 39% last week.

BA.2 has been blamed for a major spike in cases and a moderate spike in hospitalizations in Europe, China and Hong Kong. Levine said those places may face different situations than the United States because of their lower immunity from previous waves and vaccinations. 

“It is uncertain at this time if the U.S. will see a slight surge in cases, or just what I’ve been calling a prolonged tail to the epidemic curve of Omicron,” Levine said. “So far, that is exactly what we’ve been seeing in Vermont, though it is still early.”

He said thus far, hospitalizations have not risen in Vermont. But the state modeling update appears to contradict that slightly: The report said new hospital admissions increased this week, going from about four a day to about six a day.

By contrast, the number of people hospitalized for the disease at any one time remains low. The health department reported 14 people were in Vermont hospitals with Covid-19 as of Tuesday, including two in intensive care. 

Scott added that about half of hospitalized Covid patients were not there because of the disease, but tested positive while visiting the hospital for something else.

The health department reported two more Covid deaths, for a total of nine so far in March. Fatalities remain low compared with their elevated rate through February, according to the state report.

In total, 613 people have died from the virus in Vermont since the pandemic began.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont winds down Covid vaccine clinics as BA.2 subvariant rises.

Starting Saturday, the United States will require anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to provide proof of vaccination against Covid when crossing the land borders or coming over by ferry.

“Starting on January 22, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security will require that non-U.S. individuals entering the United States via land ports of entry or ferry terminals along our Northern and Southern borders be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and be prepared to show related proof of vaccination,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas in a press release. 

“These updated travel requirements reflect the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to protecting public health while safely facilitating the cross-border trade and travel that is critical to our economy.”

The new restriction applies to all border crossings between Canada and Vermont.

The measures were first announced by the Department of Homeland Security in October. 

They mirror vaccination requirements already imposed by Canada, and match the requirements the U.S. has imposed for international travelers arriving by air. 

Unlike Canada, the United States is not requiring proof of a negative Covid test for admission through the land border.

Read the story on VTDigger here: New vaccination requirement takes effect Saturday at Canada border.

About 57% of Vermont’s incarcerated population eligible for a Covid-19 booster shot have received one since the state Department of Corrections rolled out its program early this month, according to the latest available numbers.

A breakdown of the figures shows that as of Monday, of the 1,283 incarcerated people in Vermont’s six correctional facilities and housed out-of-state at a Mississippi prison, 967 are vaccinated, or 75%, according to Rachel Feldman, a corrections department spokesperson

Of those 967, Feldman said, 866, or 89%, are “booster eligible,” meaning they have received earlier vaccination shots long enough ago to qualify for a booster. 

And of those 866 incarcerated people eligible for a booster shot, 494, or 57%, have received them, Feldman said.

For comparison, according to the state Department of Health, 56% of eligible Vermonters 16 and older have received the booster shot. 

Feldman said there are still incarcerated individuals who need to be offered booster shots, while some who have been offered one have refused to get it.  

“All facilities have had the boosters offered,” she said, adding that there are incarcerated individuals in some of those facilities that still need to be offered the booster shot.

That is expected to take place by the end of this week or early next week, according to Feldman, and she said more up-to-date numbers would be available when the department compiles its next weekly update on Monday.

The corrections department, Feldman said, has provided incarcerated individuals with educational information about the boosters. 

In addition, she said, incarcerated people can review on their computer tablets messages from officials, including Mark Levine, Vermont’s health commissioner; Nicholas Deml, the state corrections commissioner; and Vermont Defender General Matthew Valerio, about the booster shot.

As of Monday, 160 incarcerated individuals in custody in Vermont and eligible for a booster have refused the shot, while 34 of those eligible for a booster shot housed out-of-state in the Mississippi prison have refused a booster, Feldman said.

“We cannot do anything about those who refuse,” she said. “Everyone has a right to make the choice for themselves.”

Across the state’s correctional system, Feldman said late Wednesday afternoon, there currently are two incarcerated individuals who have tested positive for Covid-19.

Neither Valerio, whose department oversees the state’s Prisoners’ Rights Office, nor Emily Tredeau, the supervisory attorney for that office, could immediately be reached Wednesday for comment.

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Read the story on VTDigger here: 57% of eligible incarcerated individuals get Covid-19 booster so far this month.

Updated at 5:58 p.m.

Private insurers are now required to reimburse Vermonters for at-home Covid-19 test kits, Gov. Phil Scott said at a press conference Tuesday.

The at-home test kits are antigen tests that use a self-administered nasal swab and return results within 15 minutes. Although they are slightly less accurate than the conventional PCR test, their high accuracy level, quick turnaround and ease of use have made them a commonly used tool in schools and health care settings. 

Antigen tests have become increasingly available at pharmacies and local retailers, but demand for the tests has increased as well, causing complaints about a national shortage. President Joe Biden announced plans last week to begin reimbursing Americans for at-home tests in the coming weeks, but Scott’s reimbursement to Vermonters applies to tests from Dec. 1 onward.

Scott said he hopes to expand reimbursements to people without private insurance in the near future. 

The governor’s office said in a Tuesday evening press release, “Although Vermont lacks authority to extend the emergency rule to self-insured plans, the State is encouraging those plans to voluntarily follow the rule in anticipation of new federal regulations recently announced by the Biden Administration.”

Mike Pieciak, head of the Department of Financial Regulation, said the ultimate goal was for Vermonters to be able to walk into pharmacies and get an at-home test for free.

For more details on how to use an antigen test and what to do if you test positive, check out VTDigger’s video on antigen testing.

Risk to unvaccinated Vermonters spikes

Almost two weeks since Thanksgiving and the holiday weekend after, the data is clear: Vermont is in a “true post-Thanksgiving surge,” said Mark Levine, commissioner of the Department of Health.

Cases are up 31% in the past 14 days, far outpacing the increase in cases following Thanksgiving 2020, Pieciak said. Vermont is now fifth-highest in the nation for its case rate.

That surge “is being driven by those who are not fully vaccinated,” he said.

Not fully vaccinated Vermonters are now 5.1 times more likely to get sick than fully vaccinated Vermonters, the highest gap in those rates since July. Cases among not fully vaccinated Vermonters have increased 95% in the past seven days.

Unvaccinated Vermonters are more than three-quarters of hospitalized Covid-19 patients and critical care patients, Pieciak said. The state’s hospitalization rate has risen recently, hitting a record of 90 people currently in the hospital with the virus Tuesday, including a record 31 people in intensive care.

Levine said his department has noticed a trend of unvaccinated Vermonters showing up in emergency rooms, severely ill with Covid-19, without getting tested. 

“They are essentially first learning of their Covid-19 diagnosis as they are wheeled up to the ICU or general hospital bed,” he said.

He urged Vermonters to get vaccinated and to get their boosters, but “if you’re choosing and continue to choose to not get vaccinated, I asked you to at least prioritize getting tested for Covid-19,” Levine said.

Pieciak said the forecasts that cases will remain elevated or increase in the coming weeks. Scott said getting through the holidays is “going to be, probably, our most difficult time. … Small gatherings, family gatherings are going to impact the rate of transmission.”

[Looking for data on breakthrough cases? See our reporting on the latest available statistics.]

Levine said Vermonters should keep gatherings small and wear masks in public spaces. More tips for protecting yourself at holiday gatherings are available on the Department of Health website. 

Officials said the booster dose of the vaccine, now open to all adult Vermonters, and the vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old were key components of fighting the Covid-19 surge.

Roughly 84% of eligible Vermonters have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, including 47% of children 5 to 11, the Department of Health reported. Seventy-six percent of eligible Vermonters 5 and older have completed vaccination, and 42% of the eligible booster population — adult Vermonters — have received a booster dose.

Still, Secretary of Education Dan French said child vaccinations are not likely to change the situation in schools until January at the earliest. K-12 schools are still reporting hundreds of cases each week, according to health department data.

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Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont rolls out reimbursements for at-home Covid-19 antigen test kits.

Vermont lawmakers and legislative staffers could be required to demonstrate proof of vaccination or weekly negative Covid-19 tests through the duration of the 2022 legislative session, according to a draft plan being considered by Statehouse leadership.

The Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee on Tuesday discussed the draft plan as well as other coronavirus mitigation measures necessary to hold at least some in-person activities in the new year.

Last year’s legislative session, which began before many Vermonters were able to receive their vaccines, was fully online and remote. Legislative procedures were livestreamed for the public and media online, and lawmakers called in from remote locations to fulfill their legislative duties.

According to the draft released Monday, all legislators and staffers for the 2022 session would be required to prove they are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, or test negative for the virus on a weekly basis, to enter shared spaces on the Capitol complex in Montpelier. The policy would be effective beginning the first day of session in January and last until leadership agreed upon its end date.

If approved by leadership, the policy would apply to both the House and Senate chambers to remain consistent across the Capitol. It would also be in addition to an existing face mask requirement for anyone over the age of 2 who enters shared spaces in the Capitol complex, whether vaccinated or not.

The draft’s definition of “fully vaccinated” is that every applicable person has received their first and second doses of the Pfizer or Moderna two-dose vaccines, or their single dose of the Johnson & Johnson, at least two weeks prior. Booster shots would be “encouraged but are not required under this policy.”

Those who remain unvaccinated would need to take weekly Covid-19 tests, unless exempted. Proof of a negative test taken within the last 96 hours would need to be demonstrated on the first workday of every week. An unvaccinated lawmaker or staffer could be granted either a medical or religious exemption from weekly testing.

Besides lawmakers and staffers, though, many other people typically wander the Statehouse halls during the legislative session: journalists, lobbyists and members of the public, in particular. Lawmakers agreed at Tuesday’s meeting that safety measures for those individuals must be addressed before the session begins.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Legislature could require vaccines or weekly testing for lawmakers and staffers.

BURLINGTON — The nation’s top education official visited two Burlington schools on Friday, stopping by classrooms and touring a Covid-19 vaccine clinic for children.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona also met with Dan French, Vermont’s education secretary, and parents and officials from the Burlington School District.

Cardona said he was impressed with the district’s offerings for after-school and summer programs, which serve more than 1,500 students. He also commended the vaccine clinics the district held this month at its elementary schools for children ages 5 to 11.

Half of Vermonters ages 5 to 11 already have been registered for a Covid-19 shot, he said. The state opened up appointments for children on Nov. 3.

“This is a model of what it should look like across the country,” he said at Champlain Elementary School on Pine Street after touring a vaccine clinic there.

The secretary gave chocolate coins from the U.S. Department of Education to several children who had just been vaccinated. He said it was great to see volunteers and first responders from around the community at the clinic, helping kids get their shots.

“We’re thankful that, as schools reopen, we reclaim that role of being the hub of communities where our students feel safe, our parents feel safe,” Cardona said.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders was scheduled to join Cardona at the schools on Friday, but got held up in Washington, D.C., said Kathryn Becker Van Haste, the senator’s state director. Van Haste said Sanders was delayed by the Senate’s debate over the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

Cardona also visited a second-grade classroom at Champlain Elementary where students had made birthday cards for President Joe Biden, who turns 79 on Saturday.

Earlier Friday morning, he visited a pre-kindergarten classroom at Sustainability Academy on North Street and spoke with several teachers and students there.

Together with French and Van Haste, Cardona also talked to a parent at the school about the importance of parents and teachers working together to support students. 

“When we do have relationships,” he said, “that schools are listening to parents and parents are viewed as really important partners — students succeed.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Biden’s education secretary offers praise for Burlington schools.

The Covid pandemic has continued to drag on for nearly two years, changing all of our lives in ways great and small. For our two daughters, ages 5 and 7, this pandemic has lasted for a significant portion of their lives.

This was most evident when we first went to the local library after it reopened to the public this summer and our younger daughter — who was 3 when the pandemic began — had no memories of ever having been there before. Since starting kindergarten, she has never eaten in the school cafeteria or gathered with families in the gymnasium for a weekly schoolwide community meeting like we used to do.

We are thrilled to have these community engagements once again within reach with the recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. While we are grateful that researchers took their time to ensure the vaccine was safe for children, it feels like we have all been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

Covid vaccines are now among the most studied medical interventions in history, with more than 7 billion doses administered worldwide to nearly 4 billion people. In the United States alone, more than 245 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered, with a remarkable safety record.

We have thus far taken some comfort in knowing that children were less likely to suffer serious illness or to die from Covid, but that doesn’t mean there is no risk from the disease. According to the CDC, more than 8,300 children ages 5 to 11 have been hospitalized from Covid, a third of whom were admitted to the intensive care unit. Saddest of all, 173 children ages 5 to 11 have died of Covid in our country.

In fact, despite their lower overall risk from Covid, children are actually at the highest risk of multi-system inflammatory syndrome, a scary and sometimes life-threatening condition that can result from Covid infection. And some infected children can develop “long Covid,” remaining ill for months. 

Compare that to the study of the Pfizer vaccine, where there were no recorded serious side effects in children 5 to 11.

Across all age groups, unvaccinated people are six times more likely to contract symptomatic Covid. Unvaccinated people are a whopping 12 times more likely to die from Covid if they do contract it. 

All of this can seem like just numbers until you’re sitting by the bedside of your own sick child, knowing that there was something you could have done to prevent it.

As if protecting our own children’s safety is not enough, vaccinating children protects the lives of others as well. Researchers at Oxford recently confirmed that people vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine who had breakthrough infections were both less contagious and were contagious for a shorter period of time (in addition to being far less likely to contract Covid in the first place). As a result, according to CDC researcher Dr. Sara Oliver, the decrease in Covid transmission from vaccinating children as soon as possible may prevent 600,000 new cases of Covid by March of next year, in addition to reducing the possibility of a new, more contagious variant emerging (Delta on steroids).

Reports of childhood deaths from Covid often highlight the fact that the child had additional health problems, so it can seem easy for parents to dismiss the dangers of Covid if your own child is healthy. But it should go without saying that someone else’s immunocompromised child is still a child worth protecting! And hospitalization rates from Covid for Black and brown children are three times higher than for white children, further highlighting the racial disparity in health outcomes.

Please don’t get your information on vaccines and medicine from blogposts, YouTube, or social media. Don’t even get it from us. It’s perfectly normal to have questions about the best choices to keep your child healthy, so please reach out to your child’s pediatrician — a medical expert who you know and trust — with any questions or concerns. And take comfort in knowing that Vermont’s pediatricians and other doctors are getting themselves and their own children vaccinated.

You can sign up to get your children vaccinated on the Vermont Department of Health website. Getting vaccinated is quick and easy and is absolutely free. 

Just as Vermonters have come together countless times during this pandemic, getting our children vaccinated is the next step in ensuring a brighter and safer future for us all.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1198516/covid-19-vaccinations-administered-us-by-company/

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/03/1051299050/covid-vaccine-kids-5-11

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccinated-people-are-less-likely-spread-covid-new-research-finds-n1280583

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/02/1051301705/cdc-advisors-recommend-pfizers-covid-vaccine-for-children-ages-5-through-11

Read the story on VTDigger here: Tom and Julia Rogers: Why we are vaccinating our children.

From Sesame Street to school-based clinics, the push to vaccinate children ages 5-11 against Covid-19 is well underway. 

As of Friday, more than 15,000, or roughly 35%, of the 44,000 Vermonters in that age group are scheduled for, or have already had, Pfizer shots at a state clinic, according to data from the state Department of Health. Health leaders hope to vaccinate 60% of children ages 5-11 by the end of December.

The state health department said on Friday that roughly 5,500 children have received their first dose. Some 5,200 children at high risk for complications from Covid-19 have completed their two-shot series. 

The two-dose series is the only Covid-19 vaccine regimen to receive emergency authorization for use in young children. As with the adult dose, children receive their second shot at least three weeks after the first dose, and full immunity kicks in roughly two weeks later. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend boosters for children in that age group for now. 

While the adult and child vaccines have the same active ingredients, the children’s shot has less of them. In Vermont, the children’s vaccine is already available at independent providers, such as some pharmacies and in state-run clinics. The state plans to set up a total of 188 clinics with children’s doses in the coming weeks, according to Mike Smith, secretary of the Agency of Human Services.

Here’s what we know. 

Why should I vaccinate my child?

Children can still get seriously ill from Covid-19, even if no Vermonters in that age group have been hospitalized or died from the virus thus far. But the coronavirus is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. for children ages 5-11, said Judy Orton, a pediatrician at Bennington’s Green Mountain Pediatrics. 

“We don’t expect children in that 5-11 group to die,” Orton said. “They’re not supposed to die. …  Have there been many deaths? No. But even one death is one too many.” 

Amy Pfenning, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Community Health in Rutland, said getting young children vaccinated protects the family from the realities of prolonged quarantine as well as missed school and workdays. 

As parents and guardians know, even mild illness in children can mean sleepless nights, doctor’s appointments and extra trips to the pharmacy. The time it takes to care for a sick family member could also mean lost income or using up paid sick and vacation days. 

Getting children vaccinated also protects grandparents, immunocompromised siblings or parents with preexisting conditions from catching the virus, being hospitalized, and possibly enduring lingering symptoms and long Covid, Pfenning said. 

There are benefits to the vaccine even if children do not come in regular contact with people who are at high risk for serious infection. It lessens the overall transmission of the virus, an important protection against mutations that could give rise to versions of the virus that are better at bypassing the immune system. 

“It helps us get back to our normal lives,” Pfenning said. 

Are the vaccines safe?

Yes. The Food and Drug Administration reviewed vaccination data from 3,100 children before authorizing the Pfizer series for emergency use in that age group earlier this month. The vaccine was roughly 90% percent effective in preventing the coronavirus after two doses, according to the FDA, and none of the children had any serious or long-term side effects. 

Most children can expect to have a sore arm for a day or two, Orton said. Some children may feel tired, have low-grade fevers or swollen lymph nodes, but those symptoms, too, go away quickly. Lingering effects are uncommon, but none should persist after eight weeks after being vaccinated, according to the CDC. 

The shot draws on decades of research on how the immune system behaves, the risks and benefits of vaccines, and our understanding of viruses, Orton said. 

“This has probably been the most well studied and most followed-up vaccine in the history of vaccines, and probably the most public too,” Orton said. “So we have a lot of data to go by.”

Parents should also feel encouraged by the fact that the vaccine is temporary, so delayed reactions years or decades down the road are unlikely, said Rebecca Bell, president of the Vermont chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Robust immunity is the only thing that lingers after the vaccine leaves the body, she said.

Orton said parents worried about the safety of the vaccine should balance that with the dangers of the virus itself. Coronavirus can take a serious toll on children, and the symptoms can be unpleasant. Some kids lose their sense of taste and smell for a time. Others contend with fatigue, aches and pains, difficulty walking, and labored breathing. 

Others may develop rare but serious conditions such as inflammation of the heart, known as myocarditis, or Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, which can damage internal organs.

“We can’t predict who is going to be a long haul, who is going to have long-term consequences, who might get pneumonia and need oxygen or, even worse, be in an ICU,” Orton said. “Vaccines can prevent a good share of those.”

Why does my child need 2 doses? 

Children need two shots for the same reason other routine vaccinations require multiple doses: for better protection, Orton said. 

The first shot is a little like the blueprint that teaches the body to protect itself from the coronavirus, she said. The second shot helps the body to mount an even better response. The protection the vaccine grants is stronger and more reliable than natural immunity, according to a recent CDC study.

Orton said natural immunity does not always protect people from a second coronavirus infection, which could be serious even if the child’s first bout of the virus was mild. That is especially true in winter, when other common respiratory illnesses such as the flu or respiratory syncytial virus circulate.  

“Your immune system would be pretty taxed, so you may have more severe disease,” she said. 

My kid is afraid of needles. What should I do?

When it comes to vaccine anxiety, children tend to take their cues from the adults in their lives. That’s why Orton suggests that parents use a matter-of-fact tone when discussing the vaccine with their child. An adult may say something like “this vaccine is going to keep you healthy.”

Orton suggests parents present simple solutions to children’s concerns about pain or other side effects. Parents could say, “If your arm gets sore, we’ll give you a little Tylenol. We’ll put a cool cloth on it. You’ll get a cool Band-Aid, and all is good.”

Orton said parents can help children understand what to expect by giving a pretend shot at home ahead of the appointment. Other resources, including Sesame Street’s special episode on coronavirus vaccines, may also help children feel comfortable about the vaccine.

In most cases, however, most children find that the anticipation is worse than the shot, even when kids are very afraid.

“I even say, ‘I’m pretty sure your sister pulls your hair harder than this is going to feel,’” Orton said. “And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re right.’”

Mike Dougherty contributed reporting.

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Read the story on VTDigger here: What parents need to know about Pfizer shots for children.