Question: I have gotten this question on almost every call I’ve done recently– cancer patients, truck moms, my family– everyone wants to know when they will get their vaccine?
Answer: There’s still a lot that we don’t know yet, which is why there’s no easy answer to this question. Included herein are two things that we can be confident of, followed by a brief discussion of process, and some informed speculation about other priority populations.
Two Things to Be Confident About
- If you are a healthcare provider, particularly a healthcare provider or support worker caring for COVID patients, you are likely to be among the first to receive the vaccination. Both Pfizer and Moderna require two shots, taken 3 weeks and 4 weeks after the initial shot, respectively. The USA has an estimated 21 million healthcare workers and Pfizer and Moderna estimate that they can have enough product to vaccinate 20 million Americans in December and another 25 million in January. If all goes according to plan, healthcare workers across the country could be fully vaccinated by February.
- If you are a member of the general population– someone less than 65 years of age, without underlying health conditions, who does not work in an essential job– you will not be in a priority population and can expect to be vaccinated (if all goes according to plan) in June or thereabouts. As reported in the Washington Post, Dr. Fauci stated “I would say starting in April, May, June, July — as we get into the late spring and early summer — that people in the so-called general population, who do not have underlying conditions or other designations that would make them priority, could get” shots.
Process
The exceptionally promising results of the Pfizer, Moderna, and most recently, AstraZeneca vaccine trials mean that we’ll likely soon have initial vaccine distribution! The FDA is reviewing Pfizer’s emergency use authorization request on 12/10 (next week!) and could make a determination within a short few days– perhaps extending to a few weeks. The Federal Government is ready to ship the first 6.4 million doses within 24 hours of FDA approval. As a result of these developments, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is meeting this afternoon(2pm EST!) to finalize priority populations for Phase 1a vaccine distribution and ongoing safety monitoring. The Advisory Committee’s recommendations will go to CDC, and will thereafter likely become CDC guidance. States will use the guidance to inform their vaccine distribution/prioritization strategies, but it is ultimately up to each state to make their own determinations. FDA and Operation Warp Speed have requested that all states submit their final vaccination strategies by this Friday! Draft executive summaries for each state are already online. Between Pfizer and Moderna, an estimated 65 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of March. For more background, see our Q&A of 11/10.
Other Priority Populations
Within the last day or so, the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and STATNews have all run really informative stories about vaccination prioritization. Beyond healthcare workers, people living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities (~3 million people) are likely to be prioritized early on in vaccine distribution. When it comes to other priority populations, an estimated 87 million Americans work in essential jobs– food and agriculture, manufacturing, law enforcement, education, transportation, corrections, emergency response and other sectors. These workers would get priority over the general population, but just what order of priority is still unknown and how essential workers will be prioritized as compared with other priority populations like older Americans (~53 million ages 65+) or Americans with underlying conditions (~100 million) depends on state-by-state decisions. Decisions about people living in other institutions that have witnessed huge caseloads (like prisons) are also forthcoming. Because the vaccine has not been tested in children <12 years of age, they will be among the later vaccination recipients.
While We Wait
It is essential that we continue following good public health practices while we wait for the American population to be vaccinated and even if we are among those Americans to get vaccinated earlier. This means we will need to continue mask wearing, social distancing, etc. well into 2021. Why? Because it takes some time for the protective effect of a vaccine to kick in (perhaps one month or so); Because we still don’t know whether people who are vaccinated can transmit the virus to others; Because the vaccine is not 100% effective. As Dr. Fauci recently stated, “we are not going to turn [the pandemic] on and off, going from where we are to completely normal. It’s going to be a gradual accrual of more normality as the weeks and the months go by, as we get well into 2021.” These vaccines give us some light as we consider the prospects for 2021. In the meantime, we must all do our utmost to stop the virus from spreading further. We can save thousands of lives!