Sen. Chapin Rose | Facebook
Sen. Chapin Rose | Facebook
Hundreds of ineligible employees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were allowed to register for the COVID-19 vaccine in early February. This was allegedly due to county health officials misunderstanding regulations from the state government.
Those allowed to wrongly register in advance include coaches with the basketball program.
The estimate from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District is that 1,500 individuals were wrongly given the coronavirus vaccine in the first four days of February. The reason given for this was "ambiguity" in the vaccination guidelines in Illinois.
"I raised this over a month ago: pointing out that ineligible, otherwise healthy young people were getting vaccinated when seniors and the disabled couldn't find a shot anywhere," state Senator Chapin Rose said on his Facebook account on March 7.
Other reasons were cited for the mistake being made.
In the Illinois coronavirus vaccination plan, kindergarten through 8th grade teachers as well as preschool and childcare workers are a part of phase 1b. Nothing in the regulations said anything about higher education workers, creating the ambiguity. University employees were originally intended to be vaccinated as part of phase 1c.
University employees who received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine by mistake were still allowed to receive the second dose.
Alerts Sign-up