Courtney Balcombe

News Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

Pennsylvania currently only allows the COVID-19 vaccine to people 65 years and older as well as healthcare workers. The second phase of our eligibility allows for essential workers. However, some college students might come from another county or even state where their eligibility may be different from what PA state allows.

To allow educational employees to a COVID vaccine but not the students they teach and interact with almost every day seems rather absurd. While students and faculty are required to wear face masks while on campus, students that live on the campus are required to wear them almost all day, unlike their professors who leave the campus at some point.

Requiring students to travel home twice within a month so they can receive their COVID vaccines would also be hard on the student who would need to drive to the campus and drive back to their hometown for them to receive their vaccine.

When the election comes around, students can register to vote in the state they attend college at as long as they live there for 30 days. Then the campuses sometimes have shuttle busses to take them to polling locations so they can make their vote count.

If college students had the same opportunity to receive a COVID vaccine the way they can register to and go vote in the state they attend college, they should also be able to register and get a vaccine in the same state and county as their college campus.

There are even college students who have health conditions and did not qualify in the first phase of eligibility for the vaccine who may need it for them to return to their on-campus classes instead of being one of the few students who would need to be specifically on Zoom.

Even the students who commute should be allowed to qualify since they too would be working with the same professors every day as well as other classmates. Allowing one group of a college campus to get the vaccine without allowing the whole college campus to be eligible would make no sense.

Sadly with how limited the COVID vaccine is, getting appointments is hard to get even when you do qualify. Many people in the first phase may still be waiting to get their first COVID shot when PA opens its next phase of eligibility. 

There’s never a guarantee that you will get your vaccine in your phase because you have such a long wait and as an appointment opens up, it closes just as quickly.