Letter: Many questions about Barrington’s vaccine rollout

Posted 2/1/21

To the editor:

The inexcusably chaotic initial rollout of a limited supply of doses of Covid vaccine to the citizens of Barrington has been unnecessarily frustrating and anxiety provoking, and …

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Letter: Many questions about Barrington’s vaccine rollout

Posted

To the editor:

The inexcusably chaotic initial rollout of a limited supply of doses of Covid vaccine to the citizens of Barrington has been unnecessarily frustrating and anxiety provoking, and foreboding.

Many questions about what happened and what is to happen in the future need answering. The only answer from town management and employees is “we are awaiting guidance from RIDOH”. That is negligently insufficient!

Transparency is necessary in order to restore and build confidence and give reassurance.

As to what happened:

• Did the town have a plan in place for registration and administration of vaccine? If not, why not?

• What was the mechanism and what were the priorities in notifying citizens and in assigning the available doses? Who made those decisions and when were they made?

• Were those decisions hoc or by documented previous plan?

• Were all doses assigned to 75-plus year-olds? If not, why not?

• Did town officials, employees or their relatives receive assignment of any or how many doses?

As to what is to happen going forward given that RIDOH has administratively failed the town by inadequate guidance so far:

• Does the town have a plan for registration and administration of vaccine which could be adjusted as may be required by future RIDOH guidance?

• What is the plan? If there is none, why is this so?

• If not dictated by RIDOH, within the wave of 75-plus will there be priorities? How will the priorities be structured and by whom using what criteria? If no prioritization plan exists, why?

• If the town made its own decisions, in whole or in part, in the prioritization of assignment of the limited doses recently was a qualified healthcare professional involved in the decision making process?

We have been in this pandemic for nearly a year and it has been known that vaccine was to be available for more than two months. Why is there no evident workable plan? Who bears responsibility? And who and what is to be done about it NOW?

As Allan Klepper was quoted as saying (generally), are the elderly citizens of Barrington to again and repeatedly be treated as pigeons scrambling for the few crumbs of bread haphazardly tossed by town officials?

Lawrence P. Bowen

Barrington

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