The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (A.C.I.P.), an influential U.S. government advisory panel, voted 13-1 on Tuesday to recommend that health care workers and nursing home residents should receive the first coronavirus vaccine doses when they become available for public use.
The panel of scientific experts met to discuss how to ethically and equitably distribute coronavirus vaccines amid limited supply and extremely high demand. The A.C.I.P. was created to advise the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), with its recommendations not binding, but widely heeded by doctors.
The A.C.I.P. concluded that healthcare workers and nursing home residents were among the groups most vulnerable to serve coronavirus infection, thus recommended to get priority access to the limited supply. The two groups account for about 24 million people out of the U.S. population of about 330 million.
Later this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will decide if the vaccines developed by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)/BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) have enough safety and efficiency evidence to warrant issuing an Emergency Use Authorization by the end of the year. Currently, each vaccine developer estimates that no more than 20 million doses will be available to the U.S. population by year's end, with each vaccine requiring two shots to be effective at preventing infection.
The A.C.I.P. plans to met again to advice on what groups should be next in line for the vaccine. These second priority groups could include teachers, workers in essential fields like food production and transportation, as well as older Americans and those with underlying health conditions.
The Trump administration's Chief Science Advisor for Operation Warp Speed, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, told The Washington Post in a virtual interview on Tuesday that the United States could vaccinate its entire population by June 2021. From there, there could be enough doses created to immunize the rest of the world's population by early to mid-2022.
If enough of the population opts to receive a vaccination course, the U.S. "should have this pandemic under control in the second half of 2021."
Saloui highlighted in the interview that Americans should be more informed about the possible side effects of both vaccines. While both vaccines have proven to be safe in the short-term, about 10% to 15% of volunteers reported significantly noticeable side effects after injection.
The side effects, which were reported to on average last up to a day and a half, range from redness and pain at the injection site as well as fever, chills, muscle aches and headaches. The majority of these side effects are usually classified as mild to moderate.
"The longer, more important kind of adverse events such as some autoimmune disease or others have not been reported in a different way between the placebo group and the vaccine group in these two trials, which is very reassuring," Saloui stated. "I always make sure we say that [while] we know the short term and I'm going to call it midterm effects of the vaccine is now well understood, and the long-term safety is not yet understood by definition."
It is important that the population understands the possible side effects, because both vaccines require a second doses and will not work properly if only one shot is administered.