On Thursday afternoon, Governor Roy Cooper announced the timeline for Group 4 and 5 vaccine distribution would be moved up, meaning all adults will soon be eligible to get a shot.
According to Governor Cooper, improvements to logistics and the supply-chain mean North Carolina can update its rollout plan, placing it ahead of the Biden Administration’s May 1 goal for making vaccines available to all adults.
“The biggest change will happen on April 7 -- when will open eligibility to Group 5, and that means all adults will then be eligible for the vaccine.”
Before then, on March 31, the state will open the rest of Group 4. Group 4 covers a wide range of frontline employees, including many retail and commercial workers who were not part of earlier groups. (You can find detailed information on vaccine eligibility groupings here.)
While 16- and 17-year olds will be included in the April 7th opening of Group 5, only one of the three currently available vaccines is approved for that age range. According to Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, that will require some tweaks to the state’s vaccine finder service (which you can find here).
“It’s only the Pfizer vaccine that is authorized for 16 and 17-year-old, that means the Moderna and the Johnson & Johnson are only for those who are 18 and up … As we go into Group 5, we know that we are going to be opening it up to that group, and we’re going to need to make it easier for those who are 16 and 17 to identify which providers have the Pfizer vaccine.”
Individual counties across the state will still be in charge of determining which group to distribute vaccines to; some counties have already moved into Group 5.