First COVID-19 Vaccine Doses To Go To Health Workers, Say CDC Advisers

Health care workers will almost certainly get the first doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. when one is approved, according to Dr. José Romero, head of the committee that develops evidence-based immunization guidelines for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That's a decision based on the science of what will quell the pandemic fastest. "It's not just the doctors and nurses that are interacting with patients, but also the support personnel that help," Romero said in an interview Thursday with NPR. "It could include those persons that are delivering food, or maintenance people that could come in contact with them," so they can protect themselves and patients from the virus, and stay healthy to keep the U.S. health care system running.

Romero chairs the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, a longstanding CDC advisory group that includes 15 voting members, plus other vaccination experts who weigh in.

Once the Food and Drug Administration judges a COVID-19 vaccine to be safe, effective and authorized for use, ACIP will make rapid recommendations to the CDC on how a COVID-19 vaccine should be used and who should get the first shots.
"We anticipate having some vaccine for the high-risk individuals — health care providers — sometime in December or early January," Romero told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered. "And then more and more vaccine will be rolled out."
The committee's goals for deploying a COVID-19 vaccine are to "decrease death and serious disease as much as possible" to keep society functioning and to reduce the burden of health disparities, according to the CDC website.

Beyond health care workers, three additional groups are considered by ACIP to be especially vulnerable to COVID-19, based on their exposure or susceptibility to the virus: essential workers, people age 65 and older, and anyone with underlying medical conditions associated with getting seriously ill from COVID-19.