What’s slowing COVID-19 vaccinations in southwest IL? Get answers to your questions
As vaccinations continue in the metro-east, local lawmakers and health officials have criticized the inconsistencies of Illinois’ vaccine rollout. The Illinois Department of Public Health says the biggest issue is that there aren’t enough vaccine doses to meet the demand.
What’s being done to speed up the process, and when can you expect to get your vaccine?
Here are answers to questions you may have about the COVID-19 vaccine roll out in southwestern Illinois:
Q: Why is it taking so long to vaccinate people?
At a meeting with lawmakers and health officials last week, Illinois Department of Public Health’s Deputy Director of Preparedness and Response Andrew Friend said the state receives roughly 280,000 vaccines per week, nowhere near its ability to administer up to 900,000 per week.
“We have a lot of capability, a lot of capacity, but not a lot of vaccine,” Friend said.
Even as Illinois expands eligibility, the state has yet to complete vaccinating people in the first phases. For instance, Illinois has nearly 2 million residents over 65 and only 500,000 had been vaccinated as of Thursday, said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. More than 4 million people are eligible in the current phases, 1A and 1B, and only 1.5 million doses had been administered as of Thursday afternoon.
It could still be months before the state gets to all those in the early phases, Ezike said. But the state also focuses on helping local health departments use all the vaccines they have on hand rather than have them sitting around in a freezer, Friend said. Vaccinating as many people as possible will help prevent the spread of new and potentially more dangerous COVID-19 variants.
With help from the Illinois National Guard, mass vaccination and mobile sites have drastically increased the state’s ability to give shots. The National Guard is currently aiding St. Clair County with vaccinations and Madison County is scheduled to received aid in late February.
Q. What’s being done to improve the vaccination effort?
A. President Biden announced two changes to the federal COVID-19 response last week to help states ramp up vaccinations and plan for appointments.
Starting “very soon,” President Biden’s Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said recently, there will be a 16% increase in the weekly vaccine allotment sent to the states: from 8.6 million doses to a minimum of 10 million doses. Those doses are distributed based on each state’s population, according to Biden.
Biden’s administration is also guaranteeing a minimum amount of vaccine doses that states will receive over a three-week period.
In a recent press briefing, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said states previously weren’t told how much vaccine they were going to get each week until “a day or two before it was available.”
“So it’s impossible, as you can imagine, to make appointments ahead of time if you don’t know how many vaccine doses are going to be available that week,” Pritzker said.
Q: Why can’t local health departments plan better for how many vaccines they’ll have?
Prior to Biden taking office, states received last-minute notice of the doses they’d receive each week, making it difficult to share information with local health departments.
Those local agencies for now are some of the only places people can book appointments as hospitals and pharmacies await doses directly from the federal government and build up their infrastructure. In order for health departments to use doses effectively, they need to be able to plan in advance.
Biden promised in January his administration would give states a three-week forecast of the minimum amount of doses they could expect. Using that information, Illinois started sending forecasts to local health departments statewide Thursday, Ezike said.
State Sen. John Curran, a Republican from the Chicago suburb Woodridge, complained that those forecasts weren’t available for public review. The state health department provides information online about each county’s vaccine inventory, but the site doesn’t specify how much each county received per week, and its available data could be delayed by as much as 72 hours.
John Wagner, Monroe County Health Department administrator, agreed with Curran.
“There’s not a fair distribution of vaccine across the state,” Wagner said. “I would really like to see IDPH post their weekly allocation of vaccine. Certain areas are getting far more than other areas. Some areas are finishing 1B, getting down to 65, and I’m still on my 75-plus-year-olds.”
Q: What happens when someone has an appointment for a shot but doesn’t show up?
In Madison County, the health department’s director of community health and public relations Amy Yeager said when someone cancels their appointment the health department works quickly to fill that appointment before the end of the day. In an ideal situation, whoever cancels will give notice ahead of time, but she said that’s not always the case.
“Whenever we have an empty slot from a cancellation, we’ll typically go to the next people on the list,” she said. “We take their [the person who canceled] info so they’re not lost in the cue.”
However, Yeager said the county hasn’t wasted one dose of either COVID-19 vaccine it received from the state due to a high level of caution from the health department. She said vaccine doses are only prepared when the county is certain there someone ready to get a shot.
St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency Director Herb Simmons said the county has only experienced a “significant” amount of no shows or cancellations on one occasion, but cancellations themselves aren’t rare.
He said typically the county follows a model similar to Madison County’s, where the county searches for another individual on the vaccination list to receive the shot when someone cancels or doesn’t show up to their appointment.
Q. Is the state of Illinois tracking detailed demographic information about people who are getting the vaccine, including their race, gender and age. If not, are there plans to do so?
Yes, the Illinois Department of Public Health is tracking the age, race and gender of those who have received doses and those who have been fully vaccinated. That data can be viewed through IDPH’s vaccine tracker. As of Friday, the state had vaccinated more than 300,000 people, ages 16 to 64, and just over 74,600 people 65 years or older.
Q: Who is eligible for vaccination?
A. While supplies are limited, only select groups are eligible to receive the vaccine at this time.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made recommendations to states about how they could decide to prioritize people based on their risk of exposure to the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and their risk of severe illness from the disease.
Frontline health care workers and long-term care facility residents and staff members became eligible in Illinois’ first round of phased distribution, called Phase 1A. People in that group who opted out can still get the vaccine in future phases, if they change their minds.
Phase 1B started Jan. 25 statewide. Vaccinations in this group are by appointment only. The following people are eligible in 1B:
People who are 65 years old and older
Firefighters
Law enforcement officers
911 workers
Security personnel
Teachers, principals and school support staff members
Daycare workers
Food and agriculture workers
Manufacturing workers
Corrections workers and inmates
U.S. Postal Service workers
Public transit workers, including those who work for ride-sharing services
Grocery store workers
Staff members at homeless shelters and women’s shelters
Q. When will the general population be allowed to get a shot? Will it be in the summer or fall?
A. It isn’t clear when metro-east counties will begin vaccinating the general public , but officials in several counties say the vaccination of the current eligible 1B group will take at least a few more months. The 1B population includes people 65 years or older, first responders and some educators.
Vaccination of the general public will occur in Phase 2, which comes after the vaccination of the 1B and 1C groups.
Officials in Madison County in early February said it will take a “few months” to vaccinate the estimated 50,000 members of the 1B vaccination group in their county.
County Health Department Director Toni Corona said Friday the county hopes to vaccinate 2,500 people a day in the coming weeks, meaning it would take roughly 40 days to vaccinate the entire 1B population.
So far 4,731 Madison County residents have been fully vaccinated, or 1.79 of the 262,900 people who live in the county.
Randolph County Health Department Administrator Angel Oathout said vaccinating the entire 1B group in her county would take about two months. Oathout said she doesn’t know when 1C vaccinations will begin and said it largely depended on the number of vaccines the county receives as time goes on.
In St. Clair County, officials said there is no current estimation on how long 1B vaccinations would take. However, the county is currently vaccinating roughly 1,456 people a day, according to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health. An estimate on how many people are in the 1B population group wasn’t available.
The state says the next vaccination group will be 1C and will include people 16 to 64 years old with high-risk conditions including obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, pulmonary disease, kidney disease, cancer, pregnancy, sickle cell anemia and other people who are immunocompromised.
The state is planning the next stage as the current stage takes place, meaning 1C vaccinations are being planned now. When 1C begins, further planning for Phase 2 will begin.
The 1C group will also include more essential workers.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, that includes people who work in transportation and logistics, food service, construction, finance, information technology and communications, energy, media, legal, public safety, water and wastewater and public health workers.
In Phase 2, the Illinois Department of Public Health says the state and counties will focus on vaccinating the rest of the general population and anyone who did not get their vaccines during the earlier stages. As more vaccines become available, the state will get closer to Phase 2, according to the state plan.
However, the state has not pinpointed or set a goal for when Phase 2 might begin.
Q. Can I set up an appointment with my significant other?
A. It depends. In Madison and St. Clair counties, when you are contacted to set up your appointment, it’s possible that if you fall into the same vaccination group and signed up at the same time as your significant other that you could schedule your appointments for the same time.
However, St. Clair County Health Department Emergency Response Coordinator Sam Bierman said that in St. Clair County it largely depends on when you and your partner sign up for the vaccine, as the county works in a chronological order.
Q. How do I set up an appointment for a shot?
A. As of Feb. 13, 12 local Walgreens locations are setting up appointments for those eligible in Phases 1A or 1B, according to the state’s vaccine locator at coronavirus.illinois.gov. The locations are:
5890 North Belt West in Belleville
6505 N. Illinois St. in Fairview Heights
704 Cambridge Blvd. in O’Fallon
401 Belt Line Road in Collinsville
102 W. Vandalia St. in Edwardsville
1650 Washington Ave. in Alton
1201 Camp Jackson Road in Cahokia
515 Carlyle Ave. in Belleville
2532 N. Illinois St. in Swansea
5939 Belleville Crossing St. in Belleville
2510 State St. in East St. Louis
1108 Hartman Lane in Shiloh
Anyone in the metro-east who is eligible to receive the vaccine can set up a vaccination appointment with Walgreens online at walgreens.com/findcare/vaccination/covid-19. You’ll have to create an online account. The pharmacy isn’t setting up appointments over the phone.
Local health departments and hospitals are also facilitating appointments.
These are the ways to let a county health department or hospital know you want to set up a COVID-19 vaccine appointment:
St. Clair County: County residents can fill out the COVID-19 Notification for Vaccine Availability form online at health.co.st-clair.il.us to be added to the vaccine waitlist. (If you don’t have internet access or need help signing up, call the health department at 618-825-4447.)
In East St. Louis, residents 65 years and older can call the East Side Health District at 618-271-8722 to make an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Madison County: The health department has launched an online appointment scheduler on its website at https://www.co.madison.il.us/departments/health where people who did not fill out the county’s vaccine survey in January can schedule their appointments. As of Friday, all appointments were filled. Limited appointments are available, and County Health Department Director Toni Corona said more dates and appointments as resources and doses are available. Those without computer access should call 618-650-8445.
Clinton County: County residents and people who work in the county can fill out the Clinton County, IL Health Department COVID-19 Vaccine Registry online at clintoncountyhealth.com or call the health department at 618-594-6622 to be added to the vaccine waitlist. (The waitlist is currently only for people who are eligible in phases 1A or 1B. You don’t need to fill out the form if you already called to get on the waitlist.)
Monroe County: County residents can sign up for the phone and email alert system CodeRED. Notifications will include the date and time of the county’s vaccination clinics, as well as which residents are eligible to seek appointments.
Randolph County: County residents can call the health department at 618-826-5007 to be added to the vaccine waitlist. (The waitlist is currently only for residents who are 65 years old or older.)
Bond County: County residents and people who work in the county can fill out the Bond County, IL Health Department COVID-19 Vaccine Registry online at bchd.us to be added to the vaccine waitlist. (The waitlist is currently only for people who are eligible in phases 1A or 1B. You do not need to fill out the form if you already called the health department to get on the waitlist.)
Washington County: Call the health department at 618-327-3644 to be added to the vaccine waitlist. (The waitlist is currently only for residents who are 65 years old or older.)
BJC HealthCare: Preregistration for a vaccination appointment is available online at bjc.org/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines. You don’t have to be a current patient of BJC HealthCare to get vaccinated, but you do have to be a resident of either Illinois or Missouri. BJC will contact people to set up appointments when they become eligible and when supplies are available. The hospital system notes on its website that “it could be several weeks, or even months, before you are able to schedule.”
Red Bud Regional Hospital: People eligible for vaccination who live or work in Randolph County can join the hospital’s vaccine waitlist online at redbudanytime.com.
Memorial Hospital in Chester: Patients of the hospital’s clinics who are eligible for vaccination can sign up for the vaccine waitlist online at mhchester.com/covidvax.
Q. When do I come back for my second shot?
A. The timing of your second shot depends on which shot you received. According to the FDA, if you receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, you will be scheduled to receive your second dose 21 days after your first dose. For the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, a second dose is administered 28 days later.
What vaccine you get varies from day-to-day in counties throughout Illinois and depends on what vaccine is provided by the state health department on that day.
Q. What exactly should I expect when I visit the vaccination center at Belle-Clair Fairgrounds?
A. St. Clair County recently opened a mass vaccination site at the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds. If you are scheduled to receive a vaccine dose at the fairgrounds, here’s how it might go.
The Belle-Clair Fairgrounds has two options for vaccinations: a drive-thru site and an indoor site for people who aren’t able to drive themselves.
For the drive-thru, enter the fairgrounds from S. Belt E — there are police or national guardsmen at the entrance. From there, you will be directed to the first of two check-in stops.
At the first, they’ll check your ID to make sure you qualify for the current phase of vaccination roll-out. Then you’ll drive up to the second, where you’ll receive the vaccine record card you’ll need for your second dose and they’ll get your consent to be vaccinated.
Finally, you’ll be directed to the third stop, where you’ll be vaccinated in your car. Up to 15 cars can be vaccinated at once. When weather permits, a second lane will be created to increase capacity, according to staff.
After vaccination, you’ll have to wait at least 15 minutes to be monitored for any adverse effects. Depending on your health history, including any reactions to other vaccines, you may have to be monitored for 30 minutes. Your car will be marked appropriately, and then you’ll be directed to the right part of the parking lot, depending on your wait time.
After the monitoring time is complete, you’ll be able to leave the Fairgrounds.
Q. Once I have both shots, is it safe for me not to wear a mask or social distance?
A. No, you need to continue to wear a mask and to social distance. According to the Center for Disease Control, masks need to be worn for the time being as not enough information is available to determine how likely COVID-19 is to transfer between people after receiving both doses of vaccine.
Officials in St. Clair County have continuously asked for people who have been vaccinated to continue wearing a mask. County Chairman Mark Kern said keeping virus spread down is a key part of the vaccination process.
To protect yourself and others, follow these recommendations from the CDC:
Wear a mask over your nose and mouth
Stay at least 6 feet away from others
Avoid crowds
Avoid poorly ventilated spaces
Wash your hands often
Q. I can’t drive. How can I get to my appointment?
A. In St. Clair County,the county transit district is offering rides to people who are 65 years or older and have a confirmed vaccination appointment through the health department.
People eligible for the shots will be able to take the MetroBus or MetroLink to the Belleville Transit Center. A St. Clair County Transit District Express Shuttle at the center will take riders to and from the fairgrounds. The service runs Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The free transportation is being funded through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
No similar programs have been announced in other metro-east counties.
Q. I’m eligible for the shot. Why can’t I get an appointment right now?
A. Some metro-east health officials say they are prioritizing within the large 1B group because of the limited vaccine supply they have.
Here’s the order some counties said they are scheduling appointments:
St. Clair County: People 75 years and older were first. Now, people who are 65 years and older can get appointments, according to the county. County officials say educators are next but have not announced when vaccinations of that group will begin.
Madison County: Individuals who are 65 years or older can be vaccinated, along with educators and first responders.
Randolph County: People who are 85 and older were first. Now, people who are 75 and older, first responders and teachers can get appointments, according to Health Department Administrator Angela Oathout. Next in line are people who are 65-74 years old, the latest COVID-19 update from the health department stated.
Monroe County: People who are 85 and older were first. Now, people who are 70 and older can get appointments. Sign up for CodeRED alerts or check the health department’s Facebook page for the latest information.
Health officials said they decided to give appointments to the oldest residents first because they have a high risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19.
Q. How do I spot a vaccine scam?
A. Scammers may try to take advantage of Illinoisans’ eagerness to get vaccinated by asking them for money or personal information in exchange for early access to the vaccine, authorities say.
The Illinois Attorney General’s Office encourages you to take these steps to protect yourself from vaccine scams:
Do not buy any kind of COVID-19 vaccine or treatment on the internet or from an online pharmacy.
Hang up on any calls, including robocalls, that direct you to take immediate action or provide personally-identifiable information, such as your Social Security number or bank account number.
The Better Business Bureau’s advice is to “be skeptical of anything that seems too good — or crazy — to be true.”
You can report any scams you see to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office online at ccformsubmission.ilattorneygeneral.net or by calling the consumer fraud hotline at 1-800-243-0607.
Q. How much will the vaccination cost me?
A. There is no cost for the vaccine, but providers can charge an administration fee for giving the shot to someone, according to the CDC.
That fee can be reimbursed by private insurance or, for uninsured patients, by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Provider Relief Fund, CDC states on its website.
Q. What vaccines are available?
A. In December, the FDA authorized two vaccines made by drug companies for emergency use: one from Pfizer and BioNTech and the other from Moderna. It did so because “there are no adequate, approved, available alternatives” and because “the known and potential benefits of the (products) outweigh the known and potential risks,” the federal agency stated in documents for vaccine recipients.
Both of the authorized vaccines require two doses administered three to four weeks apart, depending on the type of vaccine.
Last Thursday, Johnson & Johnson applied for emergency approval for their one shot vaccine, according to the Associated Press.
Q. What are some common side effects of the vaccine?
A. The vaccine side effects that trial participants reported most often were fever, headache and generally feeling unwell, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said during a press briefing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says these symptoms are signs the immune system is working.
Q. How does that compare to the effects of COVID-19?
A. Some people experience mild illness from COVID-19 or no symptoms at all, but the disease can have potentially serious and life-threatening complications, including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, leading to multi-organ failure and death, according to the FDA.
Reporters Kelsey Landis and Lexi Cortes contributed to this article.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow to share your questions with us
Help the BND report on COVID-19 vaccines and their distribution in southwestern Illinois. Send your questions, tips and coverage ideas to newsroom@bnd.com or 618-239-2500.
