Updates from state government

• As of Thursday night, DPH reported a total of 534,827 cases of COVID-19. The state reported 1,803 new confirmed cases. The state has now confirmed a total of 15,373 deaths from the virus.
• When Governor Baker announced Wednesday that people 65 years old or older, the residents and staff of affordable and low-income housing for seniors, and people with two or more health conditions that put them at higher risk for hospitalization or death would be able to start booking vaccination appointments at 8 a.m. Thursday, it represented roughly a doubling of the number of people eligible for the limited number of vaccine doses.
• Demand for COVID-19 vaccine doses among the roughly one million people who became eligible to receive them Thursday morning was overwhelmed the state’s vaccination scheduling website, causing it to crash. The state said it had not added the more than 70,000 appointments that Gov. Baker said would become available at 8 a.m. to the system by the time it failed. Appointments will be made available soon and will be released throughout the morning.
• People visiting the vaxfinder.mass.gov website after 8 a.m. Thursday were met with a message that “this application crashed.” Visitors were advised to try again later. The website appeared to be back up at about 10 a.m., though it was unclear whether the new appointments had been added at that point.
• At least some of the vaccine doses already allotted to Massachusetts this week will not arrive here until Monday, and the state’s COVID-19 Command Center is working with providers to determine how the delay might affect appointments that have already been booked. The state is shifting its existing inventory of COVID-19 vaccine doses around, too, in an attempt to fulfill existing appointments until the delayed shipment arrives. The cause of the delay, an administration official said, was staffing shortages at vaccine manufacturing facilities.
• Earlier Thursday, Baker said he and other governors had requested permission to send the National Guard to Kentucky and Tennessee to pick up and bring back the states’ next batches of COVID-19 vaccine doses as the southern part of the country deals with unusually cold and wintry weather. It is unclear whether that request was denied, but administration officials said late Thursday afternoon that the National Guard had not been activated.
• Governor Baker believes a new pooled testing program coming to some K-12 school districts next week will offer a “valuable tool” in the fight to keep COVID-19 contained, but he did not offer a clear response Thursday when asked about the top House Democrat’s desire to see educators gain immediate vaccine access. Governor Baker neither openly embraced nor rejected it, instead recounting a push the U.S. Centers for Disease Control made to prioritize adults 65 and older and those with two or more comorbidities. Governor Baker also pointed to a pooled testing program he said will roll into many schools next week, which would bundle together several samples and test them at once, then re-test everyone in any batch with a positive result, as a means of screening schools more widely and rapidly.
• The Legislature adopted an order (H 66) Thursday formally establishing a 28-member bicameral committee tasked with studying redistricting in Massachusetts, releasing reports, and making recommendations to be filed with the House and Senate clerks. Rep. Michael Moran will serve as the House co-chair of the Joint Committee on Redistricting and while Sen. William Brownsberger serves as the chair of the Senate Committee on Redistricting, it was not immediately clear if he would also serve as a co-chair of the joint committee.
• The House also agreed to a Senate amendment to an order (H 65) relative to the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke Oversight Committee, changing the text to allow the Senate president to designate a Senate co-chair.
• A collection of education and civil rights groups wrote to state lawmakers on Wednesday, saying they are “absolutely convinced” the state should not administer its MCAS exams this year. Citizens for Public Schools and 17 other organizations urged legislators and state education officials to seek a federal waiver that would allow them to cancel the tests this spring, as Massachusetts did last year when the COVID-19 pandemic first upended schooling and forced students and teachers to adapt to remote learning.
• Signatories include the presidents of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, Boston Teachers Union, Massachusetts Teachers Association and NAACP New England Area Conference, as well as the executive directors of Lawyers for Civil Rights and the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance. Two members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education student representative Jasper Coughlin and parent representative Mary Ann Stewart also signed on.
• Justices of the state’s highest court promoted John Bello to administrator of the Massachusetts Trial Court, elevating him to a role where he will oversee the day-to-day functioning of the courts amid a pandemic that has upended judicial operations. Bello, who has served as associate court administrator since December 2017, will take over the top job starting March 1, the Supreme Judicial Court announced Thursday. He will succeed Jonathan Williams, who departed in December after more than three years in the role.
• Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s top legal counsel Eugene O’Flaherty is leaving City Hall and returning to private practice as Walsh waits to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next secretary of labor. Walsh’s former chief of staff Dan Koh will join the Labor Department as Walsh’s chief of staff starting on Tuesday.
• Federal regulators will reexamine the Weymouth compressor station, a controversial natural gas project that already received authorization to begin operations, in the wake of two emergency shutdowns at the site last fall. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced Thursday that it established a paper briefing process to “further examine public safety concerns associated with the operation of the Weymouth Compressor Station.” On Sept. 24 FERC gave Enbridge and its subsidiary Algonquin Gas Transmission permission to put the station into service.
• Boston Mayor Marty Walsh signed an executive order Thursday setting a goal that 25 percent of city spending and contracting be done with minority- and women-owned businesses, following the completion of a city-wide disparity study that recommended structural reforms. The order says 15 percent of spending should head toward women-owned businesses and 10 percent toward minority-owned businesses. The city will also invest $2 million into the creation of a supplier diversity program tasked with working with city departments to “foster the full participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in pursuing contracting opportunities,” according to a summary of the order.

Special thanks to MassAccess for providing us this summary.