"A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel voted 13-1 Sunday to put “frontline essential workers” and people 75 years of age and older next in line to be eligible to receive a vaccine against Covid-19.
That so-called phase 1b group is estimated to include about 49 million people, or nearly 15% of Americans, according to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The committee included frontline essential workers such as firefighters, police officers, teachers, corrections officers and others in the phase 1b group, but relegated “other essential workers” to phase 1c.
The full list of frontline essential workers also includes all educational staff, including daycare workers, food and agricultural workers, manufacturing workers, U.S. postal service employees, public transit workers and grocery store workers, according to ACIP’s provided list. These workers “are in sectors essential to the functioning of society and are at substantially higher risk of exposure” to Covid, ACIP said.
“I would like to note that the persons 75 years and older represent 8% of the population, 25% of hospitalizations and have a very high death rate. Frontline essential workers have high exposures. They include a disproportionate share of racial and ethnic persons who also have a disproportionate share of hospitalizations,” Dr. Katherine Poehling, a member of the committee, said after the vote.
Dr. Henry Bernstein of Northwell Cohen Children’s Medical Center, who voted against Sunday’s recommendation, explained that he is in favor of including those 65 years of age and older.
Phase 1c should include persons between the ages of 65 and 74, people between the ages of 16 and 64 who have high-risk underlying conditions and remaining essential workers, ACIP also recommended Sunday. That’s 129 million Americans, according to ACIP, or over one-third of the country.
Those remaining essential workers include transportation and logistics workers, food service workers, construction workers, finance workers, IT and communications workers, energy workers, media personnel, legal workers, engineers and wastewater workers, ACIP said. And underlying conditions for prioritization purposes includes obesity, cancer, smoking and more, per ACIP.
The committee’s recommendations will now go to CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, who typically accepts the committee’s recommendations, setting federal guidance on how states should implement distribution of the scarce doses. But state officials are charged with the final say on distribution. The CDC earlier this month recommended that states first prioritize health-care workers and long-term care facility residents during the initial rollout of the vaccines."
"We are faced with the situation, at least in the short term, where we have a limited supply of vaccine available to us," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC said.
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