Teachers Struggle to Find COVID-19 Vaccines

Joshua Hirschfeld

03/01/2021

It has been almost a year since the Coronavirus pandemic first gripped the lives of every person around the globe, and it now appears that the end is in sight. Vaccines from multiple pharmaceutical companies designed to protect against the Sars-Cov2 virus have been approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, allowing the potential for a return to normalcy. There’s just one small problem.

The two most effective vaccines against COVID-19, developed by Pfizer and Moderna respectfully, are in very short supply in the United States, with only about 1.5 million doses being available for states and local municipalities daily due to mismanagement and a lack of preparation. As a result, only a few thousand people can be vaccinated on any given day in any area, making the vaccination rollout painfully slow. Howard County, with a population of 325,000, is experiencing this reality, as the state of Maryland will only be providing 5,200 doses of the vaccine over the next couple of weeks.

In an effort to establish some sense of order, Maryland and other states are using vaccination priority levels developed by the Centers for Disease Control, grouping the local population into smaller groups to help lower the demand. Currently, Maryland is in Stage 1C, meaning all adults over 65, frontline workers, healthcare workers, those essential to government, and educators are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Though this still means demand is much higher than the current supply of vaccines, it is reduced to more manageable levels.

As a result, some 851,000 Marylanders have been vaccinated, including members of Reservoir’s faculty. Ms. Willman, a Spanish teacher at Reservoir, was able to get her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine a few weeks ago through the University of Maryland Medical System, who contacted her for an appointment after she had been selected through an eligibility survey. “It was so easy. I was impressed with how efficient the whole process was,” she recalled when describing the vaccination process.

Like many teachers in Howard County, she had been instructed to wait until more vaccine was available before scheduling an appointment. That clearance did not come until February 4th, giving teachers very little time to get vaccinated before schools reopen in less than a month. As the school system has limited doses to provide to teachers, they are encouraged to look for available vaccines wherever possible. “It’s actually been a scramble [for teachers] to find vaccines,” Ms. Willman added, in reference to her colleagues still trying to get an appointment to be vaccinated. “It’s sort of like luck, you have to be on your email and when the link comes you gotta go.”

Despite the good fortune of Ms. Willman and some other HCPSS staff, many faculty will be returning to the in-person setting with only masks and gloves to protect them against the disease. New guidelines from the CDC do not require teachers to be vaccinated to teach in-person classes. Efforts have been made by President Biden and other government officials to secure additional vaccine doses. They have been successful in obtaining enough doses of vaccine for every adult in the United States, though many of these doses will not be available till June at the earliest. This, paired with the growing number of more transmissible variants of COVID-19 spreading around the globe, means that the fight to end COVID-19 is nowhere near done, and will continue within society for the foreseeable future.