Teachers in all U.S. States are now eligible for vaccination, but there is still some confusion

NY Times:

Teachers in all U.S. states are now eligible for vaccination, though there is confusion in some states.

As of Monday, all K-12 educators nationwide are officially eligible to be vaccinated against Covid-19, though the situation is more straightforward in some states than others.

President Biden had urged states last week to make vaccinating teachers a priority, with a goal of “every educator, school staff member, child-care worker to receive at least one shot by the end of the month of March.” Mr. Biden said all teachers should be able to get vaccinated starting March 8.

Most places didn’t wait that long to start. At least 38 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico were already vaccinating school workers to some extent by the end of last week. Some had opened up eligibility to educators weeks earlier, while others — Texas, for instance — did so immediately following the president’s announcement. Still others, including Massachusetts, were planning to open up vaccine eligibility to all teachers later this week.

A handful of states chose not to deviate from their rollout schedules, in most cases preferring an age-based approach to who gets the vaccine first. State-run sites in those places have not yet opened up to all educators. But state-run sites are not the only option: Teachers in those states are now eligible for vaccine appointments at pharmacies participating in the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program.

Some drugstore chains that are part of that program, CVS among them, began vaccinating teachers right after the president’s announcement, without waiting for the March 8 start date.

Still, the different federal and state approaches have led to some confusion.

“It has been frustrating,” said Keith Gambill, the president of the teachers association in Indiana, where state officials have not yet set a date when vaccines would be available to all teachers.

Some pharmacies in the state have begun vaccinating teachers, and a grocery chain, Meijer, has announced plans to set up pop-up clinics around the state, but Mr. Gambill said the barriers facing teachers, from scheduling to geography, remain steep. ...