BATON ROUGE, La. — On Thursday afternoon, Gov. Edwards held a press conference to discuss severe winter weather and COVID-19.
During the conference, Governor Edwards announced several new groups will be eligible to receive the vaccine, beginning on Monday, Feb. 22.
“Teachers, school support staff and daycare employees have played a critical role throughout this pandemic and their safety is important to our continued recovery,” said Gov. Edwards. “We also know that those people with certain underlying health issues are more likely to have severe or devastating outcomes from COVID, which is why we are expanding vaccine access to people ages 55 to 64 with certain health conditions as outlined by the CDC.”
Those now eligible are:
- Persons 65 and older
- Dialysis providers and patients
- Ambulatory and outpatient providers and staff
- Behavioral health providers and staff
- Urgent care clinic providers and staff
- Community care providers and staff
- Dental providers and staff
- Non-emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) providers and staff
- Professional home care providers (including hospice workers) and home care recipients (including older and younger people with disabilities over the age of 16 who receive community or home-based care, as well as clients of home health agencies)
- American Sign Language (ASL) and foreign language interpreters and Support Service Providers (SSPs) working in community and clinic-based settings, and clients who are both deaf and blind
- Health-related support personnel (lab staff, mortuary staff who have contact with corpses, pharmacy staff)
- Schools of allied health students, residents and staff
- Law enforcement and other first responders
- Louisiana Unified Command Group
- State and local essential COVID emergency response personnel
- Some elections staff ahead of March and April elections
- Teachers and any other support staff working on site in K-12 or daycare
- All pregnant persons
- Individuals ages 55-64 with at least one of the conditions listed by the CDC as placing them at an “increased risk of severe illness from the virus that causes COVID-19”
- Cancer
- Chronic kidney disease
- COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
- Down syndrome
- Heart conditions including but not limited to heart failure, coronary artery disease or cardiomyopathies
- Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant
- Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30kg/m2 or higher but less than 40kg/m2)
- Severe obesity (BMI greater than 40kg/m2)
- Sickle cell disease
- Smoking
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus
Patients must contact a participating location and make an appointment at the location. Do not arrive at a location without an appointment. LDH cannot make appointments for residents; only participating locations can.