Frontline essential workers in the United States and people 75 years of age or older should be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the next wave of immunization, the Independent Committee of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended. That group includes about 49 million people.
After those groups were vaccinated, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) said the dose should be given to people aged 65 to 74, people aged 16 to 65 with an underlying health condition, and other essential workers who are not considered frontline in the groups.
The vaccine will be in limited supply for at least the next few months. The CDC expects doses to be available for vaccination to 20 million people in December, 30 million people in January and 50 million people in February. “Difficult choices have to be made in this setting,” CDC Medical Officer Kathleen Dooling told ACIP in a submission.
States and local jurisdictions ultimately make the final decisions on vaccine distribution and priorities, but CDC recommendations help shape their approaches.
The first phase of vaccination is going to health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. Those groups began vaccinating last week, and U.S. More than 500,000 people have been vaccinated so far.
The ACIP balances two main goals for making recommendations for a second wave of vaccinations: to prevent death and disease and to preserve social work. Adults over the age of 75 have the highest risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Frontline essential workers – which the committee says include firefighters, teachers, grocery store workers, manufacturing workers and others – are unable to work from home and are often at risk of exposure to the virus. Keeping those groups healthy will help keep key services running.
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“This approach reduces health inequalities because ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately represented in many essential industries,” Dooling said.
The committee says a third group should be vaccinated, which includes people working in essential services such as food service, construction, transportation, wastewater and media. People between the ages of 65 and 74 are also at risk of hospitalization and are at risk of dying from COVID-19, as there are younger people with underlying health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes.
While the CDC has a list of workplaces that it considers frontline and essential, different states will set those positions differently. Various interest groups are lobbying states to include their workers in early vaccination groups – for example, states are asked to give preference to its drivers.
It will be difficult to distribute the vaccine in the second and third wave of priority groups. Determining eligibility is difficult, for example, and reaching the required workers (who may not be able to take time off work, or stay in rural areas) is a challenge. Committee members stressed the importance of adequate funding for vaccine distribution. The money was diverted to the development of vaccinations, which led to highly effective end products. Local health departments need a similar level of investment in vaccination programs. The vaccines are Cadillac, Jeffrey Duchin, King County, and Washington, Washington. Said During the meeting. “But they have brought empty gas tanks.”
More than 200,000 people are being diagnosed with Covid-19 every day in the U.S., and more than 2,500 people are dying from the disease every day.
