US President-elect Joe Biden will leave it to health experts to decide who gets the COVID-19 vaccine first, Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of Biden’s Coronavirus advisory board, said Friday.
There will likely be a limited supply of Coronavirus vaccine doses available immediately after a vaccine is authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration.
“Other than health care workers, others who will be first in line to get it will be people who do have chronic underlying medical conditions, who are older, as well as communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic,” Gounder told CNN.
“Now among those groups is where it starts to get a little bit more contentious,” she added. “How do you prioritize between the 85-year-old woman in a nursing home, versus the 65-year-old African American — especially when that 65-year-old may be as just as high-risk of significant disease?”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) will recommend groups to receive the vaccine first.
“That’s where it gets a bit more political and frankly, this is where the President-elect is leaving it to the public health experts and scientists to figure out how best to allocate the limited supply first.”
The ACIP called an emergency meeting for Dec. 1, where they will vote on the very first group to get a vaccine.