HANCOCK COUNTY — The Indiana State Department of Health on Tuesday lowered the age of eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines to 60.
The move had been expected since last week. Any Indiana resident age 60 and older is now eligible to schedule a vaccination appointment, as are long-term care residents, first-responders and health-care workers.
The expansion encompasses even more members of a group vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. More than 95% of Hancock County’s COVID-19 deaths and more than 92% of Indiana’s have been age 60 and older.
The Indiana Department of Health said the expansion makes the free shots available to another 432,000 Hoosiers. Indiana’s vaccine eligibility pool had previously included Hoosiers age 65 and older, health care workers, long-term care residents and first responders.
Additional groups will be added as more vaccine becomes available, officials said.
Tim Livesay, director of pharmacy for Hancock Regional Hospital, which has had a COVID-19 vaccine clinic since December 2020, welcomes the move.
“We’ve plateaued off with our booking and we’ve got a lot of slots available, so I think it was a good thing, at least for our county,” Livesay said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the hospital’s clinic had openings as early as March 10. Appointments from people in the new age group were recorded almost immediately after the state announced the new age standard Tuesday morning. Statewide in the first eight hours after the age limit was lowered, nearly 91,000 Hoosiers registered for vaccinations, the state health department said in a social media post.
“We have plenty of slots open,” Livesay said. “We’re ready to have people come in.”
Starting this week, the hospital expanded its clinic to 12-hour days, a routine that will last through next week. Livesay said it will return to 8½-hour days Monday through Friday along with four-hour days on Saturdays after that, however.
“We’ll be able to do the same amount of vaccines per week,” Livesay said.
While the state allowed for the clinic’s hours to expand, the same could not be said for the number of workers administering shots.
“So it was kind of non-beneficial for us,” Livesay said, adding most appointments are getting made earlier in the day anyway.
As of Monday evening, the hospital’s clinic has administered more than 12,300 injections, with almost 4,400 being second doses and almost 8,000 being first doses.
The county also has vaccine clinics at the Hancock County Health Department, Kroger and Walmart, all in Greenfield, as well as the Meijer in McCordsville.
Eligible individuals can make appointments for vaccinations at www.ourshot.in.gov and can also be directed to websites for signing up at clinics not using the state’s system. They can call 2-1-1 for assistance with registering for a vaccine as well.
Almost 13,000 Hancock County residents have received the first dose of a vaccine and almost 6,700 are fully vaccinated. Statewide, more than 905,000 have received a first dose and almost 460,000 have been fully vaccinated.
The state plans to eventually lower the age threshold for vaccines to 50 and offer them to those younger than 50 with various underlying health conditions, like people receiving dialysis; those with sickle cell disease; recipients of a solid organ transplant; those with Down syndrome; patients actively receiving cancer treatment or who have within the last three months; and people with active primary lung cancer or active hematologic cancer, like lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma.
As COVID-19 vaccinations expand, cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue to trend downward since the surge following the holidays. Hancock County added one death Sunday and one on Tuesday, bringing its total to 128, after the state’s dashboard was recently corrected and two of the county’s deaths were removed.
Craig Felty, vice president, chief operations officer and chief nursing officer for Hancock Regional Hospital, said the hospital was treating two COVID-19 patients Tuesday and that the total has been trending down as well.
