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California's Vaccine Priority Switch Leaves Disabled People Behind, Say Advocates

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When Alice Wong found out last week that younger people with disabilities in California may have to wait many more months to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, her heart sank.

"This really took my breath away," said Wong, a San Francisco-based disability rights activist and host of the "Disability Visibility" podcast.

Wong has a rare neuromuscular disease that requires her to use an electric wheelchair and ventilator.

"I'm so angry, so sad and so scared. Not just for myself, but for the many people in my community that I care about," Wong said. "I think a lot about very young, disabled, critically ill and immunocompromised people who could die before it's their turn to be vaccinated."

Last week, the state shifted its vaccine allocation plan to prioritize recipients based on age, instead of occupation or underlying medical condition. That change, set to begin in mid-February, will prioritize residents 65 and older, potentially pushing back millions of younger people who thought they were getting close to the front of the line.

The new system, Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week in a somewhat discreet announcement of the shift, "will allow us to scale up much more quickly to get vaccines to impacted communities much more expeditiously."

But that comes as cold comfort to Wong and many other people with disabilities, who say they are at particularly high risk of contracting and potentially dying from the virus because of chronic underlying medical conditions and frequent exposure to multiple outside caregivers.

For months, advocates have been pushing hard at meetings of the state’s Community Vaccine Advisory Committee for people with disabilities to be moved up in line to receive the vaccine.

But state health officials have consistently pushed back, arguing that there's little reliable data showing people with disabilities are at significantly higher risk for hospitalization or death from COVID-19. Conversely, the data showing risk for people over 65 is unequivocal.

Read the full story.

Matthew Green and April Dembosky

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