When will I be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine?

On Dec. 30, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced that residents aged 70 and older will be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine earlier than originally planned, but that doesn't mean it will be available right away, according to Boulder County Public Health officials. In a Jan. 4 press release that called the state's announcement "unexpected", BCPH spokesperson Chana Goussetis wrote that limited supplies of the vaccines, plus logistical hurdles mean it could be "many months" before the expanded round of vaccinations is completed.

"We have already received hundreds of emails and phone calls from residents asking for vaccines," she wrote. "We are delighted that so many people would like to get the vaccine! We ask for your patience as additional vaccine doses become available, and we identify resources to provide the additional doses."

Colorado's original vaccine distribution plan was unveiled in early December, and included three phases, with frontline health care workers and long-term care residents and staff at the front of the line in Phase 1A, and "moderate-risk" health care workers and first responders right behind them in 1B. Phase 2 included high-risk individuals and essential workers, and finally, in Phase 3, the general public, who were expected to get their first doses in the summer.

The state's new phased plan, which comes on the heels of an updated recommendation from the , Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices expands Phase 1B to include both older adults and "frontline essential workers" including educators, transit and grocery workers.

"The state has been working to fine-tune a phased approach to vaccine distribution in order to save lives and end the crisis that has been brought on by the pandemic as quickly as possible," the Dec. 30 announcement read. It then went on to note that adults over age 70 account for 78 percent of Colorado's COVID-19 deaths.

However, the state's revision was short on details on how this larger cohort would be accommodated. To date, Colorado has received a combined 262,275 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, and administered 113,700 (43.3%) of them. In a follow-up interview, Goussetis said that adding older adults to Phase 1B increases the pool in Boulder County by 30,000 people, even before the essential workers are considered, and it's not clear when more vaccine will be arriving.

Nor is it clear how the vaccination process will be scaled up to provide the additional doses. So far, the vaccine rollout has proceeded smoothly in Colorado compared with other states across the country, and Phase 1A vaccinations to frontline health care workers and long-term care residents are nearly wrapped up. In Boulder County, the process has gone "fine" according to Goussetis, but the original 1A and 1B pools were relatively small and could be accommodated at hospitals or the county health department locations.

For BCPH officials, this means it's back to the drawing board.

"We definitely have a lot of work to do," county Public Health Communicable Disease and Emergency Management division manager Indira Gurjal said shortly after the CDPHE announcement. "And with teachers and frontline essential workers, we have to do a lot more planning...Obviously, that's a lot of people to vaccinate, and we're going to have to come up with a multi-pronged approach."

For now, that approach is in the developmental stages, but BCPH is hoping to reveal more details in the coming weeks. Residents are urged to watch BCPH's weekly community COVID-19 updates on Wednesday afternoons and follow the department on social media. Residents who would like to be notified about where and when to get vaccine when it becomes available for their priority group are invited to complete the COVID-19 Vaccine Notification Sign-Up.