US inmates' access to vax varies by state

Washington, March 19 (IANS) US states have set their own eligibility lists for Covid-19 vaccines and have varied widely when it came to inmates being inoculated against the virus, according to a media report.

The likelihood that an inmate has been offered a vaccination at this point depends largely on which state their prison is in, Xinhua news agency quoted The New York Times report as saying on Thursday.

The report comes as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended prioritising prisoners for vaccines with other vulnerable groups.

Nearly half of roughly 8,700 state prison inmates in Kansas have received a vaccine, and state officials said that all prisoners who want shots will have gotten at least a first dose by the middle of April.

However, in Florida, no inmates in state-run correctional institutions have gotten shots, corrections officials said, not even those who would qualify under the state's age and health guidelines if they were not behind bars.

"There's no way you're going to get some prisoner a vaccine over a senior citizen," Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was quoted as saying by The New York Times report.

About half of states, including California, Connecticut and Kansas, have included all inmates in early phases of their vaccination plans. Florida has yet to make state inmates eligible at all, while Texas and Arkansas this week announced that they would begin allowing some inmates to get shots, the media said.

Many of the remaining states have chosen to vaccinate inmates based largely on their eligibility if they were not in prison; older inmates, for instance, are getting shots in many states, while young, healthier ones are not, it added.

Health experts, including the American Medical Association, urged to give preference to inmates in vaccination because social distancing is nearly impossible behind bars, overcrowding is common and ventilation often is poor.

Health officials are particularly worried about the risks of more readily transmitted Covid-19 variants in settings such as prisons.

Case rates among inmates are more than four times as high as those of the general public, and the death rate is more than twice as high, according to the report.

The virus has killed over 2,600 prison and jail inmates and infected more than 515,000 others, according to a New York Times database.