Since the coronavirus pandemic reached Vermont last year, Gov. Phil Scott has touted his adherence to science and data in addressing the crisis.
But on Thursday morning, a number of lawmakers and advocates pointed to what they called a glaring exception to the governor’s track record: his administration’s approach to vaccinating prisoners. At a virtual press conference, they called on Scott to prioritize vaccinating incarcerated Vermonters — and said that should have started months ago.
“This has been a source of frustration for many of my colleagues,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham. “In many ways, the vaccine rollout in this state has gone much better than in many other states. We have been able to reduce deaths among some vulnerable populations — but incarcerated people are also part of a vulnerable population.”
Earlier this month, a Vermont Department of Health vaccine advisory panel submitted a letter to the Scott administration calling for the expedited vaccination of all inmates — but the governor remained unpersuaded.
Balint said the Legislature has had “very little ability” to influence the vaccine rollout, which she said has been frustrating — especially for those who believe inmates should be prioritized.
“What kind of people do we want to be? Do we want our policies to be rooted in data? If so, then we should look at the data,” Balint said. “What sense does it make to prioritize some Vermonters who live in congregate settings and not others? These incarcerated individuals are literally locked in together.”
In Vermont, no prisoners are known to have died from the virus, though hundreds have come down with Covid-19.
“Since the very beginning of this pandemic, the people who work and reside in these facilities have been othered, ignored and mistreated by this administration,” Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said during the press conference.
Corrections workers became eligible for the vaccine on March 8. Incarcerated people, however, have become eligible only in the order by which they would otherwise qualify — by age band or pre-existing condition. As of Thursday, the state was registering Vermonters 60 and older for vaccines.
According to Department of Corrections spokesperson Rachel Feldman, 77 of Vermont’s 1,064 in-state inmates had received one or both doses of the vaccine as of last week. Ninety were slated to receive the vaccine this week, she said, and 20 more next week.
Of the 168 Vermont inmates at Mississippi’s Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, 86 have received one or both doses, Feldman said.
Meanwhile, at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport — site of the state’s largest Covid outbreak — 178 incarcerated individuals and 24 staff members have tested positive in a little more than a month, with cases still slowly rising.
“Despite being told repeatedly of the risks of spread within facilities due to overpopulation, their inability to physically distance and their health vulnerabilities, we have not prioritized their safety, and in turn, we have made our communities less safe,” George said.
‘They have zero control’
George said the administration’s rationale for vaccinating correctional officers first is that they are the ones entering and exiting prisons on a regular basis and are therefore more likely to introduce the virus to the facilities. But in reality, she said, “a large portion” of incarcerated Vermonters also move in and out of facilities on a regular basis, often serving time for just a few days or weeks on minor violations, before leaving again.
“This population is fluid, they are members of our community, and while in custody, they have zero control over their surroundings,” George said. “They cannot physically distance, and they should not be punished for that, and neither should the communities they return to.”
Jason Maulucci, Scott’s press secretary, said the Newport outbreak began at a time when the state was vaccinating people over age 70, who he said are at the highest risk of virus-related death and account for the overwhelming majority of Covid fatalities.
“There is a limited supply and everyone cannot be prioritized at once,” Maulucci wrote in a statement. “Which Vermonters at highest risk (of) death do they believe should have been made to wait to get their vaccines so younger and healthier incarcerated individuals could have been vaccinated in order to prevent this outbreak, as they have suggested?”
Health department data shows that, following the outbreak at the Newport prison, cases have been rising in Newport and surrounding communities at a significantly higher rate than in other areas.
Aimee Alexander, a Newport teacher, said her school had to go fully remote this week as a result of the rising cases.
“I’ve now seen firsthand the impact of this decision on my own community, as I sit in my house rather than my classroom,” Alexander said. “I believe we would not be fully remote right now if incarcerated Vermonters, who represent less than 1% of Vermont’s total population, had been prioritized for vaccines.”
‘Urgent and inhumane’
Lawmakers also argued that the state’s vaccine policy is inherently racist.
Sen. Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden, said that Black men make up less than 1% of the Vermont population, but 8% to 12% of its prison population. Withholding vaccines from incarcerated people, she said, is a form of systemic racism.
Ram said it would also save the state a considerable amount of money to vaccinate the people it incarcerates.
“It’s not just cost-ineffective to not have vaccines completed all in one clinic, but also to have sick prisoners at all,” she said. “When half the population of some of these facilities have Covid, it requires more staffing, more PPE, more attention to people’s medical needs. This kind of outbreak will cost money. We’re just hoping it doesn’t cost lives. It’s a miracle it hasn’t already.”
Ram called the situation in Vermont’s prisons “urgent and inhumane.” She also criticized Human Services Secretary Mike Smith’s suggestion last week that the Newport outbreak might have been caused by the swapping of medication-assisted treatment for those with opioid dependency, saying the comment only added insult to injury.
On Tuesday, Smith emphasized that his earlier remarks were just a theory, saying, “I was just expressing what we were doing, and looking at the various avenues out there, and again I cautioned everyone that this could be incorrect.”
Ram said that people incarcerated by the state need both vaccines and better addiction treatment — and, right now, in her view, it’s clear that they’re getting neither.
“It feels to me that the Legislature has run out of options to raise our voices louder or higher than we have,” she said. “It has been a tripartisan effort to bring light to this issue, but unless something changes, with the path that (Health Commissioner Mark Levine) and Scott are taking, we will be looking at a deep post-mortem analysis at what went wrong here.”
