Making COVID-19 vaccines available to the homeless and the incarcerated protects us all.
Sign our petition asking Gov. Jared Polis to give the homeless and incarcerated priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Dear Gov. Polis,
We urge you to give priority of COVID-19 vaccines to those who cannot stay home or isolate: Colorado's homeless and those who are incarcerated in Colorado.
The pandemic has made it clear: We are not healthy alone. We are healthy together.
Homeless shelters, jails, and prisons are prime super-spreader situations. People are forced into indoor, close quarters for extended periods of time. Many of these folks come and go in the general community. Many of them do not have the resources they need to have access to good health care. All of us need them to be well, too!
Public health guidelines urge that those settings where people cannot isolate themselves should receive the COVID-19 vaccine by priority. Homeless individuals and families in shelters are at much higher risk of contracting COVID-19—like those who are incarcerated. By summer, the homeless are far more likely to disperse into our general population, making them harder to locate and treat. Please move the homeless up in priority to receive COVID-19 vaccines and develop a Colorado plan to offer vaccines to homeless citizens living in cars, under bridges, along streets, shifting from one friend's couch to another, etc.
A recent study suggests that people experiencing homelessness who are COVID-positive are:
All of these factors are putting additional strain on our state's hospital system and in turn our entire community.” Please see https://images.westword.com/media/pdf/polis_letter_hlc_vaccine_12.14.2020.docx__1_.pdf
Coloradans in jails and prisons should have a shot at staying well.
Many of the homeless and incarcerated are in their current situation because of forces greater than their own actions, forces related to structural poverty and racism. Black, Indigenous, people of color are disproportionately represented in both populations.
Offering vaccines to the homeless and the incarcerated and the staff members who serve them is not just the moral thing to do, it is a smart way to protect us all from a virus that doesn't care who it infects.
Thank you for your service and your commitment to the health of all Coloradans.
Sponsored by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care
If your organization would like to co-sponsor, email: swright@couniversalhealth.org
For more information on the vaccines for the homeless action, click here
For more information on the vaccines for the incarcerated action, click here