The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said Monday that the first 20 million people to be vaccinated for COVID-19 in the United States should be healthcare workers.
The group stated in a new paper in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that “Published frameworks for COVID-19 allocation and ACIP discussions indicate a clear consensus that the first allocation of COVID-19 vaccine supplies should be directed to health care personnel.”
ACIP, which is working to decide how the coronavirus vaccine should be allocated, says that there are four groups that should be considered first for the vaccine: healthcare personnel, other essential workers, adults with high-risk health conditions, and adults aged 65 and older, including those in long-term care facilities.
Yet there will only be 40 million doses of the vaccine by the end of December, and since it is a two-dose vaccine, only 20 million people will be vaccinated initially. ACIP notes that “the initial supply will not be adequate to vaccinate the entirety of all four groups; for example, there are approximately 100 million health care personnel and essential workers.”
ACIP has not yet decided how the vaccine will eventually be allocated to essential workers, high-risk adults, and those 65 and older. The paper states, “Discussion of allocation to the other three groups is ongoing.”
