Clinics wait to vaccinate farmworkers: 'Our hands are tied'

With Georgia's sweet onion harvest approaching and COVID-19 vaccine arriving in increasing quantities from the federal government, migrant health centers around the state want to start vaccinating farmworkers. But there's a catch.

In Georgia and many other places around the U.S., such efforts are blocked by state policies that give priority for shots to other groups.

“Our hands are tied,” said East Georgia Healthcare Center CEO Jennie Wren Denmark, whose agency runs 13 clinics, including one in Vidalia, home of the celebrated Vidalia onion. Her clinics’ vaccine will instead go to patients on the state eligibility list, which was expanded this week to teachers.

Public health authorities have said in their defense that drawing up the priority lists is a complex balancing act that requires them to take into account outbreak data, the risks to various categories of workers and vital industries, and the limited supply of vaccine.

Farmworkers and activists are upset.

“Waiting and waiting has some people angry and causes despair,” said Edgar Franks, a 41-year-old leader of the agricultural union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, or Families United for Justice, who works in the blueberry fields on weekends in the Mount Vernon, Washington, area. "We’re essential, but we are not really treated as essential.”

Leticia Cuevas, 35, who works pruning wine grapes near Prosser, Washington, said: "I hope that everything could return to normal and that we would all be treated equally. We all deserve dignity.”

Farmworkers run an elevated risk of getting infected. They often live in crowded bunkhouses and eat together in dining halls. Those who toil outdoors often travel to the fields together in vans or buses. Others work in bustling packing houses.

An estimated 9,000...