Denver officials and advocates reiterated Monday their desire to vaccinate those experiencing homelessness ahead of the state’s schedule, citing the disproportionate impacts the pandemic has had on that population. 

“There is an urgent need to vaccinate (people experiencing homelessness) and service provider staff to induce herd immunity to protect people at risk and prevent large outbreaks in congregate settings,” the Denver Joint Task Force wrote in a memo to state officials. “Prioritization of (people experiencing homelessness) will also benefit our Denver Metro region population by decreasing the rate of community transmission.”

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said late last month that he had asked Gov. Jared Polis and state health officials to give more priority to the city’s unhoused community. In initial drafts of the state’s vaccine plan, officials had given that level of priority; shelters, along with dorms and prisons, were given attention because of their close quarters and the difficulty of isolating positive cases.

But when the state’s final plan was released in December, no mention was made of those experiencing homelessness. Under more recent changes, staff working at shelters will be given earlier access, but the people staying in those facilities will not.

It’s unclear Polis’ position on Denver’s request, which was reiterated in a press release Monday. His spokesman did not provide comment.

The memo from the joint task force noted the disproportionate affect the pandemic has had on the city’s unhoused people. Between a quarter and half of the city’s unhoused population is at high risk for serious illness, the task force wrote, and more than half are from minority communities, which have also been particularly hard hit by the virus. 

“A total of 905 (people experiencing homelessness) have now contracted COVID-19 in Denver County, and 256 individuals have been hospitalized,” the group wrote. “Over the course of the pandemic, the hospitalization rate for cases who are (people living in homelessness) is 28%, which is 3x higher compared to the general public, which has a hospitalization rate of 9%.” 

The task force’s push focuses on those staying in shelters, rather than people living on the street. Carly Alderman, the spokeswoman and public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said the “top priority” was people living in congregant settings.

“Here we are now in a scenario in which we’re not going to vaccinated everybody in these congregant settings and we’re only going to vaccinate (staff). That just doesn’t make sense, right?” she said. “We’re going to vaccinate one-third of people in this setting and hope that when outbreak begins, it doesn’t hit the two-thirds of people we haven’t vaccinated.” 

Alderman said advocates were “shocked” when the state changed its draft plans and excluded people experiencing homelessness from the vaccine priority list, instead relegating them into subgroups based on age and health conditions. 

“We didn’t feel that was protective enough,” she said. 

There are currently 17 outbreaks in homeless shelters across Colorado, according to data published weekly by the state Department of Public Health and Environment. Ten more outbreaks at shelters have been resolved.

The current outbreaks have infected well over 300 shelter residents and staff members. That number doesn’t include the 222 cases identified at People Experiencing Homelessness in Denver; that outbreak has been ongoing since May.

The decision to change the priorities in any direction is “horribly difficult,” said Lisa Miller, an epidemiology professor and the interim dean for for public health practice at the Colorado School of Public Health. Any change in favor of one group means a drop for another. She said that should the data support moving vaccinations into shelters, Polis would likely do it.

“The risk of severe disease, the outbreak potential in shelters or outbreak history in shelters, I think all would weight into that calculation,” she said. “And then again I think emphasizing having the plans and the outreach so that when vaccine is available, that it’s possible to actually reach folks, I think that’s also vitally important.”