- People with underlying medical conditions — from cancer to diabetes to obesity — are expressing frustration about not being able to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
- These conditions increase the risk of serious disease if a person develops COVID-19.
- For getting vaccinated, most states have made people ages 65 and older a priority.
- In some places where people with underlying conditions are eligible, there’s a shortage of vaccines.
In 1999, Donna Miranda, a legal process clerk from San Jose, California, was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy — a weakened and enlarged heart.
Miranda was placed on Social Security Disability Insurance and quit working.
In August 2018, she experienced massive heart failure and received a heart transplant at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
Miranda has been told by her primary care physician and doctors at the UCSF Heart Transplant Clinic that she’s at high risk for serious illness if she develops COVID-19 due to the immune suppression from her transplant.
“In all likelihood, if I were to [get] COVID, I would not survive it and that’s terrifying,” Miranda told Healthline.
She’s tried to get a COVID-19 vaccine several times from both her primary care clinic and transplant clinic — but with no luck.
At age 49, she’s not in the 65-and-over age group that’s currently the target of her state’s vaccination program.
“I think it’s unfair that healthy people are allowed and encouraged to get their COVID vaccine ahead of me,” she said. “I feel like my life is in limbo until I can get vaccinated.”
Source: healthline