North Carolina will expand its protocols against the COVID-19 vaccine, offering shots to people 65 and older, Governor Roy Cooper said Thursday.
The change becomes a pattern with changing federal guidelines, which add the younger age group to people 75 and older, who the state began vaccinating in recent days.
This would open up the vaccine to up to a million more people in North Carolina. It is much more than the state has on hand, so the administration of these doses can take weeks or more.
Cooper, speaking Thursday morning at a virtual meeting of the NC County Commissioners Association, said more details would come later. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mandy Cohen, plans a press conference at 2 p.m.
“We will open the criteria for people aged 65 or over,” the governor said. “Therefore, not only people 75 years of age or older will be able to get a vaccine against COVID-19 now, but … people 65 years of age or older will be able to get it, along with health care providers.”
Cooper asked county commissioners to encourage their local health departments, which manage the logistics for vaccine deployment that has been slow at first, to use the doses sent to them as quickly as possible. He called on commissioners to “make this an absolute priority” and said they should also pressure health departments to record the doses given to the state’s vaccine monitoring system.
Health departments have criticized that this system is time-consuming and difficult, but the data sent back to the state is used to determine future vaccine allocations. Cooper encouraged county governments to ask for any help they needed, including appointment scheduling and data entry logistics.
He also asked the county commissioners to set a good example, with masks and social distancing.
“The next few months will be tough,” Cooper said. “Regardless of how many people we vaccinate, we know we won’t be able to get acquired immunity for a few months. So our prevention efforts are more important than ever. I ask you all to give examples.”
He also reiterated the suggestion that local ordinances be passed to apply the masks and other mandates he has issued from the state. Some have criticized the governor for sending state-wide edicts, but leaving local authorities to enforce them or leaving them largely unenforced.
“We ask your sheriffs and other people to help us with this, because we can save lives,” Cooper said Thursday morning.
WRAL News research data reporter Ali Ingersoll contributed to this report.