CDC Panel Says Health Care Workers and Nursing Homes will Receive First Vaccine Shots

By Yehudit Garmaise

  An independent advisory committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today voted 13 to 1 to recommend that health care personnel and residents of long term- care facilities should be the first people to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

   The two prioritized groups, frontline healthcare workers and patients in long-term care, comprise 23 million Americans in a country of 330 million.

    In their early stages of availability, the administration of the shots will be carefully rationed because not more than 20 million doses of the vaccine will be ready to be administered the end of 2020, and two doses are necessary for the vaccine to be effective.

  The vaccines will be rolled out as soon as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides emergency use-authorization multiple vaccines receive authorization, which is expected to come through in the next few weeks. 

   Moderna, Pfizer, and Astra-Zeneca are the pharmaceutical companies that have asked for emergency clearance from the FDA.

   During the meeting today, Dr. Beth Bell, a clinical professor of global health at the University of Washington, said that right now, one person in the U.S. is dying of COVID per minute, “so I guess we are acting none too soon.”