Federal health officials are already trying to decide who will get the first doses of any effective coronavirus vaccines, which could be on the market this winter but could require many additional months to become widely available to Americans.
“Giving it to one race initially and not another race, I’m not sure how that would be perceived by the public, how that would affect how vaccines are viewed as a trusted public health measure,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, a group represented on the committee.
But there will be a gap between the first doses coming off the manufacturing lines and a stockpile large enough to vaccinate the U.S. population. “I would say months,” Dr. José Romero, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, predicted. As they come up with a multitiered schedule for the first 1.2 million vaccine doses and then the next 110 million, they have focused on who should be considered essential workers, what underlying conditions should be taken into account and what kinds of living environments — nursing homes, homeless shelters — put people at high risk.
Dr. Sharon Frey, a professor of infectious diseases at St. Louis University, pointed to health disparities among Black and Latino people at the recent meeting. Romero, the chairman, was doubtful. “This will not address the problem that exists now,” he said. “I think we need to deal with this issue at this time with the information that we have. And it is: They are groups that need to be moved to the forefront, in my opinion.”
“It’s imperative that we pay attention to how COVID has impacted the health of minorities differently; otherwise it compounds the inequalities we’ve seen,” Schmidt said.
I wanna see gov officials get vacccinated first. Why target minority communities?
Is this for real?
My uneducated guess is that if we follow the first mentioned criteria minority communities will be at the front of the line anyway, which is appropriate.
Give it to the politicians in DC. Let them go first, “literally.” I’m all for vaccines but skeptical about the rushed COVID-19 vaccines we keep hearing about.
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