Debate begins for who’s first in line for COVID-19 vaccine
LA TimesA nurse prepares a shot July 27 as a study of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., gets underway in Binghamton, N.Y. Who gets to be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine? “Not everybody’s going to like the answer,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently told one of the advisory groups the government asked to help decide. Foege is co-leading the academy’s deliberations, calling it “both this opportunity and this burden.” With vaccine misinformation abounding and fears that politics might intrude, CDC Director Robert Redfield said the public must see vaccine allocation as “equitable, fair and transparent.” How to decide? The CDC’s opening suggestion: First vaccinate 12 million of the most critical health, national security and other essential workers. With Black, Latino and Native American populations disproportionately hit by the coronavirus, failing to address that diversity means “whatever comes out of our group will be looked at very suspiciously,” said ACIP chairman Dr. Jose Romero, Arkansas’ interim health secretary.