DC Health has administered nearly 40 percent of its COVID-19 vaccine shots to people who are not residents of the District, according to a report by NBC4 Washington.
The practice is now planned to change, with 90 percent of vaccination appointments set to be allocated for only eligible individuals living in DC as many eligible residents haven’t been able to get vaccinated yet.
The update comes with the launch of DC’s pre-registration system for COVID-19 vaccine appointments last week.
The number of essential workers which are “disproportionately high” in the city compared to other jurisdictions according to DC Health Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt has been a key factor in local authorities’ failure to prioritize residents.
Hence, essential workers will now be required to provide a document to prove their employment in the District in order to sign up for a vaccination appointment on the pre-registration portal.
“One of the ways that we have to ensure that we are not vaccinating residents from other jurisdictions who don’t actually have an essential job in the District of Columbia is to ask for some type of proof for that,” said Nesbitt about the decision.
In Virginia, only 2.5 percent of the state’s vaccine shots were given to people from other jurisdictions — with an extra seven percent of the vaccine recipients without address information, NBC4 Washington reported. The figure is just over 4 percent in Maryland, including individuals recorded without residence.
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