The din of complaints about Arkansas restrictions on COVID vaccination eligibility has reached the governor’s ears.
Governor Hutchinson announced this morning that he was opening eligibility to everyone in category 1-B of the vaccination plan. This will add to education workers, first responders, people over 65 and food processing workers: people in manufacturing, public transit, postal and package delivery services, grocery store and food delivery workers, houses of worship employees and government employees who deal with the public. That’s about 180,000 people, he said.
Persons younger than 65 with high-risk health conditions remain in 1C, as do restaurant workers.
He said legislators and their staff will be covered. Also covered, he said, are judiciary workers, in keeping with a definition provided last week by Supreme Court Chief Justice Dan Kemp, a group the governor initially refused to cover. Did that order contribute to today’s decision? He said it was not the time then, for courts or the legislature, and he said he resisted letting people determine their own place in line. Kemp’s order directed eligibility primarily for criminal court workers. It’s not yet clear if the public-facing definition Hutchinson gave to essential government workers might also include participants in civil court proceedings, which also might have jury trials.
But this complete list of all those in 1-B makes no differentiation between types of court workers in the essential category. And it opens up broad areas of city and county government workers.
Hutchinson said some clinics over the weekend lacked the demand they’d hoped. People are either getting vaccinated or there’s resistance to the vaccine.
“We have to keep the demand for the vaccine up,” he said. “We have to keep the lines full.”
People with intellectual and developmental disabilities also will be moved from 1C to 1B. They are susceptible to the virus and relatively small in number, he said. Many have already been vaccinated because they live in care facilities.
He is also, finally, opening a statewide toll-free telephone hotline to help get appointments. “I know some have struggled with going on the internet,” he said. The number is 1-800-985-6030 and it will operate 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Twenty people will begin working today in a call center and the number will grow to 30. Their assistance will include scheduling appointments for Department of Health clinics, the next one Wednesday in Conway County.
The state phone bank will help people find a pharmacy that is providing shots, but individuals still will have to call those pharmacies themselves to make appointments.
He said people will need to be patient. The newly eligible should increase demand. He said he hoped to complete 1-B by the end of March. He also urged people who’ve put their names on more than one list to take their names off lists if they have received shots.
Health Director Jose Romero said supplies of vaccine are expected to expand rapidly, sufficient to vaccinate everyone by the end of May. He noted the new CDC guidelines issued today that give more leeway to public contact for those who’ve had vaccinations.
The state has received a shipment of the single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine, more than expected, and it will be devoted to quickly finishing vaccination for food processors.
The governor said a lack of demand was a major contributing factor in changes today, such as 2,000 people turning out for a Jonesboro clinic that planned to serve 3,000. “I was surprised by it,” he said.