It’s a nippy 25 degrees in the parking lot outside Tippecanoe County’s makeshift vaccination clinic. Residents are idling their cars waiting to be called in to receive their first dose of the vaccine.
Rebecca Harshman drove her mother to the clinic.
“Of course she was anxious,” she said. “She kept saying ‘let me know when I can get it.’”
Fritz and Jane Vogel said their grandson, who works as a pharmacist, helped register them for an appointment.
“He called us and said ‘if you want me to, I’ll get with my aunt and have her help you,’” Fritz Vogel said. “They sent us an email and said you are on for one today.”
Many of the people who received their vaccines during the local health department’s first day of the rollout did so with some assistance from family members. That’s led health experts to raise concerns about whether there is a group of older adults who might get missed.
On Monday, Tippecanoe County began vaccinating residents 80 and up.
On Wednesday, the state health department announced it would expand the group of residents eligible to receive a vaccine to 70 and older.
Khala Hochstedler is the administrator for the Tippecanoe County Health Department. She said the rollout is rushed.
“You added a whole ‘nother decade of people who are going to be very frustrated that they cannot make an appointment,” Hochstedler said. “We still haven’t addressed how we’re going to get the (age) 80-plus an appointment to get a dose in their arm.”
Hochstedler said their clinic is booked out for the next three weeks. She worries the 70-plus age group will be more nimble about setting up appointments - and could bump the 80-plus group further back in line. And despite adding more staff and more appointments, Hochstedler said it’s still not enough to meet the need.
“We know that we’re booked out,” she said. “I’ve added more time slots but it’s just not going to be enough.”
Hochstedler also worries that the 80 and older group will struggle to make appointments for themselves.
The concern led her to reach out to local churches for help.
Lisa Hood, the senior Pastor at the First Baptist Church of Lafayette, was already thinking about how to get the word out to older parishioners about how to get vaccinated.
“No one’s asked me for help yet, although one of the women I talked to yesterday said ‘I wish I’d thought to call you sooner because she was stuck on hold on 2-1-1 for hours on Friday,’” Hood said.
Unlike Hochstedler, Hood isn’t worried about her congregants older than 80 making appointments online.
“Folks who have been plugged into church communities this year have had to do so much online,” she said. “I have 70- and 80 plus-year-olds meeting me online every week. That’s incredible.”
"If we don't have access to a social network to help, sometimes we feel we are lost in the system."
But, Hood said, she understands older peoplewho don’t have family or a church community to fall back on are at a higher risk of falling through the cracks.
“I do hear the concern where if folks don’t have children or grandchildren or they’re not connected to a church community who might be looking for them? Who might be making sure they are getting the message? I’m not sure what the answer is there.”
Tom Johnson, a pastor at Covenant Church in West Lafayette, said after the news went out about vaccine appointments, the church called its older congregants to make sure they were aware.
“Every one of them, we were sort of shocked by this, already had heard and knew how to sign up or were planning to sign up,” he said.
But Johnson cautioned against seeing his congregation as indicative of the whole community.
“I wouldn’t want you to generalize that to the population,” he said. “It’s a well-educated church. We were shocked it was that many and that there weren’t the kind of questions we might be getting because of all the disinformation out there.”
Health experts like Libby Richards, an associate professor at Purdue University’s school of nursing, worry it will be hard to know who is getting missed in the vaccine rollout.
“We don’t anticipate that 100% of adults 80 and older are going to choose to get vaccinated,” she said. “So it’s hard to determine who we’re missing because we’re not quite sure how many older adults are going to take the vaccine.”
According to Richards, older adults account for seven out of 10 hospitalizations and deaths.
“I expect we’ll see a high amount of vaccination in this population,” she said. “Unfortunately we see disparities in healthcare, and aging can be one of those disparities. If we don’t have access to a social network to help, sometimes we feel we are lost in the system.”
As of Wednesday, the Tippecanoe County health department had vaccinated 190 people over the age of 80. Statewide, 455,000 people are scheduled to receive a vaccine by the end of January. 59,000 of those are in the 70-79 age group.
State health officials say residents hoping to schedule an appointment can go to 2-1-1, ourshot.in.gov, or one of the state’s Area Agencies on Aging for assistance.