People with disabilities, essential workers are eligible for WA's vaccines. Here's what that means logistically

Millions of Washingtonians are now eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. Soon, more groups of people will join them.

We're tracking who can sign up, who's still waiting, and just how many vaccines we have.

About 3 million Washingtonians are currently vaccine-eligible. That’s about 40% of the state population. This includes people who are 65 and older, or 50 and older living in a multi-generational home. It also includes school, nursing home, child care, and health care employees, and pregnant people as well.

The eligiblity criteria opened this week now also includes workers in certain essential industries, including grocery store and food bank workers. People working in agriculture, corrections, and public transit, along with first responders are also allowed to be vaccinated.

The latest eligiblity criteria also says that people, age 16 and up, who have a disability, such as Down syndrome or another developmental disability that puts them at high risk for severe Covid illness, can be vaccinated.

If you live in a facility with a lot of other people, if you need to have close contact with your care providers, have difficulty wearing a mask or washing your hands, or staying away from other people due to a disability, that's going to make you eligible.

Or if one's disability alone doesn't put them at higher risk for a severe case of Covid, they are still eligible if they also have one of the underlying conditions on the CDC's list of Covid-19 health risk factors. For example, the Washington State Department of Health says that a person who is deaf and has Type 2 diabetes is eligible to be vaccinated under this criteria.

The state offers this guidance for determining whether one fits the bill:

People with disabilities wondering about their eligibility should apply the definition to their situation: Does their disability put them at increased risk for COVID-19? They can also work with their health care provider to assess their eligibility.

A new tier consisting of 2 million more people will become eligible on March 31.

That will include restaurant workers, people who are unhoused, and anyone over the age of 60. Those people are going to need to hustle if they want to get vaccinated before the general population, because we might see all adults become eligible on May 1 — that's what President Biden wants.

But current vaccine supply isn't enough to meet that goal.

There are about 3 million people eligible. Washington has received just about 3 million vaccines, but a lot of these are double doses that will go into a single arm. The state has met its own daily goal of 45,000 people a day, but it's going to take a long time to get to our population of 7 million people.

But supply is expected to continue to increase and we could see more mass vaccination sites eventually. State officials say that in the next three weeks, for example, we're expected to get about a million more vaccines.

Leftover doses are still supposed to be reserved for eligible groups, but Department of Health Assistant Secretary of Prevention and Community Health Michelle Roberts had this to say yesterday:

“We also let providers know that we never want any dose of vaccine going to waste. If you can't find somebody in the time limit before a vaccine would need to be wasted, we encourage them to just make sure they can use that vaccine for anybody to make sure that dose gets into arms.”

They want eligible groups to get it, but at the end of the day just don't let it go to waste.

The City of Seattle, King County, and some individual providers currently have a waitlist, through which people can sign up to be notified if a vaccine dose becomes available.

When it comes to vaccination rates, we're sort of in the middle of the pack compared to other states. 23% of Washingtonians are partially vaccinated, meaning they've had at least one dose.

States like New Mexico, Alaska, and South Dakota are up to about 30% partially vaccinated. On the lower end of the spectrum are Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico with about 16% of people vaccinated.