We should be vaccinating grocery workers

The only disagreement I have with this is that we should have more broadly classified “essential workers” from the beginning, and it should include more people who do not have the ability to work from home.

Nearly a year into the pandemic, Ryan’s experience that day reflects the challenges that grocery store workers across Texas are facing in their stores every day. For months, workers have risked their health to keep shorthanded grocery stores open, all while dealing with increased hours and customers refusing to wear masks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices urged states to include front-line essential workers in Phase 1B of vaccine allocation. But Texas decided not to include any essential employees like grocery store workers in the state’s current vaccine priority groups. Without any guarantee of vaccine prioritization, grocery workers now find themselves overwhelmed and continually exposed to the virus with no end in sight.

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Back in April, when people made a rush for essential supplies like toilet paper and soap, Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a message of support for grocery store workers, saying that “everyone across our state appreciates your hard work to help Texans respond to the #coronavirus.” Since then, workers say they have felt forgotten and abandoned by the state government.

In December, the Texas Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel, in charge of designating each population currently eligible to receive vaccinations, decided against including front-line essential workers in Phase 1B. The Department of State Health Services said that the panel wanted to reserve vaccine doses for those at the highest risk of death, which includes people over 65 and anyone over 16 with a chronic medical condition that puts them at higher risk.

At least 8 million Texans currently qualify for Phase 1A or 1B of vaccine allocation, but the state has received fewer than 4 million doses thus far. The panel is currently considering potential priority groups for Phase 1C of vaccine rollout, and its decision will depend on epidemiological data about virus transmission, according to DSHS Director of Media Relations Chris Van Deusen.

However, at least 11 states and the District of Columbia followed CDC recommendations by deciding to put front-line essential workers, including grocery store employees, in the their latest rounds of vaccine allocation, according to The Washington Post. New York allowed grocery workers to start getting the vaccine last month. Arkansas has also started vaccinating teachers and educators in the first round of essential workers to receive doses, and the state plans to expand distribution to other essential workers later this month.

“You feel like you don’t matter when your own state goes against every recommendation that there is out there,” said Dawn Hand, who works at a Kroger in Houston. “Why don’t we matter? What’s your answer to that?”

I personally feel that prioritizing people who had to do in-person work, as some states have done, was the better choice than making group 1B open to the over 65 crowd, and I say that even knowing quite a few people who have gotten their vaccine as a result of that choice. Big employers, like grocery stores and big-box retail – plus all of their delivery workers – could have been brought in to help distribute and administer the shots. This would target people who are clearly at risk, and as the story notes would also have helped with the equity problem. Another group of essential workers that should have been prioritized are meatpacking plant employees, who have not only been extremely hard-hit by COVID (due in large part to the inhumane practices of their employers) but are also lower-income, often non-English-speaking people who are harder to reach for the vaccine. In their case, I’d want to send clinicians to their locations, and use whatever threats and incentives are needed to make sure their bosses give them the time and space to get vaccinated. We could still do all of this in round 3, but I don’t blame any one of these folks for thinking that they were left behind.

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2 Responses to We should be vaccinating grocery workers

  1. Manny says:

    Yes and many others but after one year of “Warp Speed”, the incompetent Republican administration failed to prepare for distribution of the vaccines.

  2. Mamacita says:

    Vaccinating grocery workers–many of whom are young, and are more likely to be asymptomatic if infected–would also be an excellent way of slowing the spread. How many people do you think they encounter in a shift?

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