The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has proposed guidelines on distributing a coronavirus vaccine in the US.
The guidelines on distributing a coronavirus vaccine aim to prioritize vulnerable Americans, healthcare workers, and essential personnel. The elderly and people with underlying health conditions will also be prioritized.
The guidelines were presented during a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Its content covers all compensated and uncompensated people working in healthcare settings, including hospitals, home-based care, long-term care facilities, pharmacies, and outpatient centers. According to the CDC, there are between 17 million and 20 million healthcare workers in the US.
Essential personnel account for 60 million to 80 million of the population in the US. They are usually in food and agriculture, education, wastewater, transportation, energy, and law enforcement. According to the proposal, they are among the first to get the vaccine.
Moreover, 100 million people with medical conditions and 53 million people over the age of 65 would be given a vaccine.
There are currently no approved treatment or vaccines for the coronavirus, which has infected 5.7 million Americans and led to the death of 178,500 individuals, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it would only authorize a Covid-19 vaccine that is safe and at least 50% effective.
“We all want a vaccine tomorrow. That’s unrealistic. And we all want a vaccine that’s 100% effective. Again, unrealistic,” said Dr. Stephen Hahn, the agency’s commissioner, during an interview with Dr. Howard Bauchner of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“But we said 50%, and the reason was because we felt that that was a reasonable floor given the pandemic,” Hahn said.
He explained that requiring the minimum of 50% effectiveness for any Covid-19 vaccine provided guidance for manufacturers on designing their clinical trials.
Most-at-risk groups
White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the US will first roll out a limited supply of vaccine doses that would not be widely available until “several months” into 2021.
There are experts who assert that the Covid-19 vaccine should be given to the most at-risk groups first, such as the elderly and healthcare as well as poor and minority communities.
The CDC stressed in its proposal that it will holding vaccinations while practicing social distancing will not be easy.
They added that healthcare settings such as offices or pharmacies could be better choices for vaccination. It would be difficult for healthcare workers to conduct it in rural areas, minorities, and populations with limited access to health care, according to the CDC.
Moreover, the agency is preparing for the possibility of sending out different kinds of vaccines at once.
The US, as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, has made investments worth millions of dollars in six potential vaccines, including from drug companies Pfizer and Moderna, which are already in phase three trials.
Trump has previously announced that the US would distribute the Covid-19 vaccine through the military, but officials from the White House and the US Defense Department have disputed that.
