The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s advisory board recommends that the first to get the vaccines are frontline health workers and elders, as the 6.4 million doses of supplies for the vaccine are limited for a certain period.
The group that will be receiving this first will be called Phase 1A, where they will most likely receive the vaccine by the end of this year.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing both the vaccines, Moderna, and Pfizer-BioNTech for emergency use authorization.
There are about 21 million healthcare workers that include people that work in hospitals, long-term care facilities, home healthcare, pharmacies, emergency medical services as well as those working in public health, where around 3 million Americans who are older are living in the skilled nursing or long term facilities.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) was officially the first step that the agency took to prioritize the act, and how important it is.
Focusing on the healthcare workers that need to be protected against the imposing threat of their jobs, they would be able to care for the people without worrying too much, as the cases spread across the country.
The group Phase 1A will also be focusing on the group that is most affected by the virus.
“I believe my vote [in favor of the recommendation] reflects maximizing benefit, minimizing harm, promoting justice, and mitigating health inequities,” said Dr. Jose Romero, the committee chair in explaining his support of the priority groups.
The CDC will be planning to use a text-based system to closely monitor the people after their vaccination if an event of a side effect occurs. It would be useful for doctors to take note of the effects and to report it for future reference.
Dr. Helen Talbot, associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, was the only member to vote against the recommendation, based solely on her misgivings about the lack of safety data on vaccinating residents of long term care facilities.
“I’ve spent my career studying vaccines in older adults, and traditionally we’ve tried vaccines in young, healthy populations and hoped it worked in frail, older adults,” she said during the meeting.
“We have now entered the realm of ‘We hope it works, we hope it’s safe,’ and that concerns me on many levels,” she added.
She noted that while studies so far show that the elderly who are vaccinated don’t experience significantly higher adverse events, that could also mean that the vaccine isn’t as effective, either. (So far, both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna report that their shots are around 95% effective in protecting against disease in all age groups.)
Talbot also worries that they might not have the facilities, or aren’t as equipped to thoroughly monitor potential side effects from the vaccine.
“I’m still struggling with that since we don’t have a good safety surveillance network in place yet,” she said.
While most Americans won’t be receiving the vaccine right away as it is available, it’s for the greater good that the health workers are to receive it first, since they will be the ones that would still be at risk of the infection as they take care of their patients.
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, said the end is in sight.
“For all the people who are anxiously awaiting [a COVID-19] vaccine, we hope this vote gets us one step closer to the day when we can all feel safe again when this pandemic is over,” she said.
Source: Time