On Dec. 14, New Hampshire received its first shipment of the COVID vaccine. Three weeks have now passed and no information has been forthcoming as to how many doses New Hampshire has received and how many people have been vaccinated. Why isn’t this information available in New Hampshire when it is readily available in other New England states?
Massachusetts has created an easy to understand dashboard that identifies the priority ranking for vaccine administration, shows a timeline for vaccinations, reports the number of vaccines received by the state, the number administered, the vaccine distribution by county, and information about the providers giving the vaccine and age of recipients. New Hampshire’s website contains a dense 39-page draft plan that is subject to change and contains no specific information concerning how the vaccine will be actually administered.
Vermont, like Massachusetts, has a website with a dashboard that displays easily accessible information to inform its citizens about the status of vaccine administration.
New Hampshire residents have a right to know what New Hampshire and its delegated providers are doing to administer the vaccine. On a more basic level, people, particularly elderly people and those with co-morbidities, want to know when and where they will be vaccinated.
New Hampshire owes it to its citizens to provide this information in an accessible format, and New Hampshire’s newspapers have an obligation to their readers to do more than simply wait for someone to tell them this critical information.
LESLIE LUDTKE
Concord