Name: Vaccine inequity on Capitol Hill: Members of Congress got their shots but essential Hill workers are still left waiting
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Vaccine inequity on Capitol Hill: Members of Congress got their shots but essential Hill workers are still left waiting

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An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.Redeem nowMembers of Congress frequently demand in floor speeches and on the airwaves that frontline workers and the most vulnerable people get dibs on coronavirus vaccines so that the rich and powerful don't get special treatment.But an Insider investigation has found the opposite is happening where they work on Capitol Hill.Lawmakers were among the first in line once vaccines were ready for distribution. They received their shots starting in mid-December, and some of their top aides are getting them now.Meanwhile, thousands of police officers, custodial staffers, construction workers, food-service employees, and others who make it possible for lawmakers to do their jobs are still waiting to get vaccinated or even find out when they'll get their shots."That has been a concern," said one custodial worker who withheld her name because staffers had been warned against speaking with the media. She said that her job is impossible to do remotely but that she might wait to get the vaccine even if it were available.Insider spoke with more than 15 essential workers at the Capitol and in House and Senate offices who said they hadn't been vaccinated and didn't know any colleagues who'd received the shot. They also didn't know when they'd be able to get one.They wouldn't elaborate and preferred not to go on the record for fear of retribution at their jobs because of long-standing orders against talking to reporters that Capitol Hill staffers said have been emphasized since the attack on the Capitol on January 6.As the workers wait their turn, the risk of exposure is real within the confines of Congress and during the commutes of those who use public transportation."I haven't heard anything" about vaccines being broadly available on Capitol Hill, another maintenance worker from the House said. He told Insider that it didn't bother him that lawmakers went first and that he tries to stay safe by keeping his distance from others and wearing a mask.Dozens of lawmakers have tested positive for COVID-19 — at least three of them since the attack on the Capitol that forced people to huddle together in lockdown. One newly elected House Republican died from complications of COVID-19 days before he was set to be sworn in.Interviews with at least eight members of Congress and emails sent to congressional leadership offices revealed that they didn't seem to have a plan — at least as of last Wednesday — to help the essential workers on Capitol Hill get vaccines.Lawmakers seemed to know very little, if anything, about when the vaccines would be made widely available to other employees.The workers who come to the Capitol every day are aware of the risk they face. A particularly scary scenario that could have exposed Capitol Hill workers to the virus was the deadly attack on the Capitol by the largely maskless pro-Trump mob. Days later, 38 Capitol Police officers had tested positive for the coronavirus, .Figures — the most recent data Insider could find — showed that more than 123 Capitol Hill workers had been infected with the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. The number, provided by the House Committee on Rules and Administration, did not include congressional staffers, most of whom are young and can work from home.The total number of infections is likely far higher now, given the surge in infections across the nation this winter. Insider requested updated figures from committee spokespeople, but they didn't provide them.House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a brief hallway interview on January 21 that he didn't know when Capitol Hill would have widespread vaccination."I think hopefully it will be made available because we work in such a close environment," said the Maryland Democrat, whose district includes a large suburban area around Washington, DC, where many government workers live.The Capitol appears to have the infrastructure to help workers get vaccines. It has health units to care for the roughly 20,000 people who work on Capitol Hill. The same units provide workers with flu shots every year.At least 55 members of Congress have said they had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Many fall in the category of people at risk of serious illness because of their age and frequent travel to and from their states and districts.Lawmakers started getting vaccines in December, one week after US regulators gave the green light to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. But since then, interviews with senators and their aides have indicated there's been no clear direction about how and when others on Capitol Hill would be inoculated.Since December 28, each House member has been picking two of their staffers to get the shots. The guidance to do so came from the Office of the Attending Physician at the Capitol, which also allowed House committee chairs and ranking members on each panel to pick four people to get vaccinated. That means a small fraction of House staffers so far has been offered the vaccine.It wasn't immediately clear what the Senate guidance is, and lawmakers and their aides offered different answers. A senior GOP Senate aide who hadn't been vaccinated told Insider that he'd heard the offices in the upper chamber had far more flexibility about how many people they were allowed to put up for vaccines.The senators whom Insider talked to were not sure."I think it's three staff," Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said when asked how many people were allowed to get vaccinated."I thought it was five," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Committee on Rules and Administration that oversees how the chamber is run, said his office received "a handful" of vaccines. He said that he wanted the Capitol's essential workers to get vaccines but that his committee didn't have a say."I'm not hearing when, but I know it's being discussed, and I'm encouraging that discussion," he said.When asked, several senators said they would want the vaccine to be more widely available."People that are doing important work here every day making sure the building operates — making sure we can do our work — they have to get vaccinated, no question," Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said. "We should make sure that others have access to it right away."Security protocols established during the Obama administration allow for members of Congress to get vaccine priority to prevent interruptions in federal-government operations.Brian Monahan, the Capitol's attending physician, first sent a letter to House members on December 17 letting them know the White House's National Security Council had informed him there would be a "small number" of shots.Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was the majority leader at the time, said he got a similar letter. Senators soon began posting pictures on social media of themselves getting the shot. McConnell's office referred questions about whether it had any authority on vaccinations to the Office of the Attending Physician.A representative for the NSC, which is now under different leadership in the Biden administration, did not respond to Insider's questions about how many vaccines the Capitol had received. The Associated Press reported in mid-December that .When it came to vaccinating congressional staff after the lawmakers, Monahan recommended prioritizing people who had to show up to work at the Capitol daily. His office did not reply to Insider's questions and phone calls about vaccinations.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office also did not answer questions about whether she had the power to secure vaccines for everyone else who works at the Capitol. Her office helped to orchestrate widespread rapid coronavirus testing at the Capitol — in concert with Monahan and the Air Force — after she and McConnell had held off for about seven months, saying Congress shouldn't get the tests while the rest of the country faced a shortage.Five days after this story first ran, Pelosi announced that with the help of the Biden administration, Capitol Police officers would be receiving COVID-19 vaccines. She did not indicate when other&nbsp; Congressional staffers would get the shots.Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said in a February 4 news release that "enough doses" had been secured to vaccinate all USCP personnel."The Department expects delivery of the vaccines to occur shortly, and is already working with the Office of Attending Physician on logistics to administer them to our employees as quickly and safely as possible," Pittman said.&nbsp;Insider found the health unit where COVID-19 vaccines were being administered, across from GOP Whip Steve Scalise's office in the Rayburn House Office Building.After getting vaccinated, people were directed down the hall into an "observation room" where a healthcare professional could monitor for any side effects. Insider spoke with two congressional aides who were leaving the observation room and another who was exiting the health unit. Those who spoke did so reluctantly, saying they didn't know much about the details of the vaccination plans.One staffer who had just received his shot said that "every office is different" regarding who has access to the vaccines. Another person, who also didn't want to be identified, acknowledged that lawmakers were talking about how to make the vaccines more widely available.Some essential workers appear to have gotten access to leftover vaccines, which must be used that day or thrown in the trash. Much of the US is .Blunt told Insider he got a note from the attending physician about additional vaccines to approve for committee staffers. He said he wasn't entirely sure why there were extra shots, however, and his office would not elaborate.Some Capitol Police officers who received a vaccine said they hadn't had appointments but were unexpectedly called down to the health unit for the shots. They didn't know how and why they'd qualified. Their experience was similar to &nbsp;where some people in stores have been offered leftover vaccines, which have a short shelf life once they're thawed.Most officers Insider interviewed said they had heard nothing about the vaccine schedule. Insider is not naming the police officers because they're prohibited in their bylaws from speaking with the media.The Capitol Police's communications office wouldn't reveal how many officers had gotten vaccinated but said that vaccinating all officers who want a shot was among its "ongoing efforts."Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman for the US Capitol Police, said the department was in talks with outside healthcare facilities to help inoculate workers.Several offices responsible for employing Capitol Hill workers refused to answer Insider's questions about the vaccine schedule, but some lawmakers said they'd discussed the hole in vaccine availability with one another."We have talked quite a bit about the need to make it available to the folks who guard the Capitol, clean the Capitol, make the Capitol work," Blumenthal said.Still, the lawmakers haven't taken action and conceded that they didn't know what the holdup was.This story has been updated to reflect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's announcement that Capitol Police officers would be receiving the coronavirus vaccines.Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.Redeem nowMembers of Congress frequently demand in floor speeches and on the airwaves that frontline workers and the most vulnerable people get dibs on coronavirus vaccines so that the rich and powerful don't get special treatment.But an Insider investigation has found the opposite is happening where they work on Capitol Hill.Lawmakers were among the first in line once vaccines were ready for distribution. They received their shots starting in mid-December, and some of their top aides are getting them...

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Vaccine inequity on Capitol Hill: Members of Congress got their shots but essential Hill workers are still left waiting

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