If you're age 16 or older in Massachusetts, you can now book an appointment to get the COVID-19 vaccine, if you can find one.
Over the weekend, Massachusetts surpassed the two-million mark for residents fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
And despite not having the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine available, Monday begins eligibility for all residents age 16 and up to get vaccinated.
Matt Murphy of the State House News Service joins us to talk about how confident the Baker administration is that vaccine supply will meet demand in a timely way.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: Thankfully, with the J&J delay, the state was actually expecting its allotment of Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be rather small at least this week, possibly next week. So the plan was counting heavily on doses of Pfizer and Moderna, the two-shot vaccines.
The administration says they have confidence that the website will be able to withstand the volume. The site has been stress-tested, and they are hopeful for no glitches there.
But supply continues to be a week-to-week, ongoing concern. And that's why you've heard the governor urge patience, telling people now that we've hit this milestone — where all adults, age 16 and older, are eligible for the shot — it could take several weeks before people are able to secure their appointments, depending on the supply from the federal government.
When Johnson & Johnson comes back online, it will help them particularly reach some of the harder-to-get-to populations; homebound seniors, homeless people like that, can make a real impact with the one-shot. The state continues to get information basically on a rolling basis, week to week, about how much it can expect, and that will impact how fast the population can get vaccinated.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: And folks can always just go to New Hampshire — because starting Monday, New Hampshire opens vaccine eligibility to people who don't even live there.
And budget season has arrived. The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee has a lot of work ahead of them for this week. Can you give us a preview?
While a lot of people are taking advantage of school vacation week, it is not a vacation for the House Ways and Means Committee. Well over 1,100 amendments to the fiscal year 2022 budget have been filed by House lawmaker, and they will be combing through these proposals in anticipation of the debate next week.
We are looking at a relatively normal budget schedule, for the first time in a long time, after last year's budget process was upended by the pandemic. This is the traditional way of doing things on Beacon Hill, but it means looking through a lot of these proposals. And after last year's budget process was basically simplified and boiled down to its nuts and bolts components just to get a budget plan in place, we're seeing a lot of interest from legislators to put their imprint on this spending plan for next year. So it should be a long week next week of debate in the House.
The once-a-decade process of redistricting has also begun in Massachusetts, when legislative boundaries get redrawn to take into account population changes. This is getting started despite the state not having vital information from the U.S. Census available until the fall. Can you lay out what lawmakers aim to accomplish before they get population data?
With the census delaying the release of their precise population data until at least September 30, that makes this process a bit more challenging than usual. But the committee is planning on having hearings in every congressional district. That would be nine hearings. They hope to have them in the coming months, wrapping things up by August, and they will be gathering feedback.
But what people would like to see in their new maps — we've seen issues crop up in the past where, for instance, a town like Chelmsford has been divided into four House legislative seats on Beacon Hill. And they've asked for more consolidation. The committee will be looking to see if they think they can do that.
We heard last week from activists in Worcester who say that despite the city's growing population, and growing population of people of color, they have never had a minority representative. And they blame that on the fact that a lot of the city's districts include suburban communities and aren't wholly contained in the city. So the committee will be looking at early population numbers, preliminary population data, to identify areas where they think they could maybe change the map.