Who Is A Priority For Getting The Vaccine?

Speaker 1: 00:00 The CDC says more than 4 million people in the U S have already received a COVID-19 vaccination. That's far below the projected 20 million by the end of 2020, but it's a significant start. Healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities are the first to receive vaccinations in California. But the question now is who comes next. The state's community vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet this week to come up with recommendations for phase one B of the vaccine rollout. And as the San Diego union Tribune reports today, that committee has been inundated with suggestions and pleas from people hoping to make it to the front of the line. Joining me as union Tribune, reporter Greg Moran and Greg welcome. Speaker 2: 00:47 I've already know where are you? I'm Speaker 1: 00:48 Good. Thank you. Now you list a number of organizations who've asked to be given priority for the COVID vaccinations. Can you give us an idea of the range of those groups? Speaker 2: 01:00 You know, it's very interesting. It is, uh, it says as broad and diverse really is as California. It's everything from individual teachers, teachers unions up and down the state industries, agricultural industries, service industries, municipal agencies, everybody, uh, you know, healthcare workers, health care organizations that do work outside of hospitals. So, you know, surgical centers, uh, dentists, things like that. It is a, a kind of a snapshot of the largest state economy in the country. And one of the largest economies in the world. Everyone, it seems as trying to make their case for a, a priority spot in the line. Speaker 1: 01:41 Uh, what kinds of cases are they making? What are they saying about why their groups should get priority? Speaker 2: 01:47 Everyone is really making a case on some level that their work and their, and the people who they represent or the work that they do is essential work. And as you know, this has been, you know, a term really since March, since the beginning of the pandemic where the state and the federal government have identified some workers in some jobs as essential and others, not that distinction has fed into a lot of the resentment that we see playing out in courts and other areas from people that were, whose businesses closed or people who can't work saying, why I'm, why am I not essential? So here, uh, many, many of the arguments that people are making are, uh, you know, what we do, whether it is we are work in a poultry processing plant or farms, that's part of the food supply chain, uh, where our work is essential. Our workers should be vaccinated at first to things like security, guards, security guards say, look, we, we work in areas with, you know, in, in hospitals and in places where people who are coming to get tested or being treated work, our workers, uh, provide security for these places where essential it's essentially everybody wants to be deemed an essential and therefore kind of get bumped up a little bit in the priority. Speaker 1: 03:03 Now, as the vaccination recommendations stand. Now, I understand isn't the next group supposed to be people with underlying conditions and seniors. Speaker 2: 03:11 Yeah. Uh, the, the proposal and it kind of moves around a lot, but is a phase. This would be phase one B. So it would be people 75 and older, uh, emergency service workers, uh, education childcare workers, you know, there's another phase, second phase of that, which would be trans transportation workers, people 65 to 74 who have high-risk medical conditions and things like that. It's this kind of sifting and parsing of the state's population into, I guess, groups of need, or is one way of thinking about it. So that's phase one, B it's, it's a pretty wide swath, uh, not as wide as I'm sure some people would like, but it would be a lot of people Speaker 1: 04:00 Now in Florida, people 65 and up can make an appointment to get their vaccine. Right now we've seen long lines of people waiting to get their shots. Is it likely we'll see that here? Speaker 2: 04:12 Probably. Uh, and I only say that because it seems very little of our, uh, uh, collective, you know, execution of our response to COVID has been seamless or without, uh, lines or things like that. So I would expect that certainly at first, um, uh, I think that the state would like to avoid that, uh, yet at the same time, I think they're feeling, uh, pressure with the surge, with the emergence of this new variant to really pick up the pace of, uh, you know, getting noodles in arms. But my guess would be you would see long lines of people, uh, in some ways that reflects a lot of the anxiety and the urgency people feel, uh, to get this vaccine, which is probably driven by a desire, not only for the good health and safety and protection, but to try to get, you know, to do some sense of normalcy. Speaker 1: 05:03 You spoke with an epidemiologist about the overarching criteria that state officials are expected to use to set priorities for vaccinations and within that are concerns about equity for communities, hardest hit by the virus. Tell us about that. Speaker 2: 05:20 Yes. Uh, it's it's a metric or, or, uh, uh, uh, criteria that the state is, is using a lot in its response to COVID in this case. I think it means a couple of things. One is it, it means that they want to assure that there's sort of no lime line jumping by, uh, people who are, uh, advantaged rich, uh, powerful, uh, connected or, or whatever that there is, uh, an equal opportunity for everyone based on their need. I think in the larger sense too, it's a, it's an attempt to acknowledge, you know, historical and long longstanding inequality in, in healthcare access, healthcare delivery, healthcare availability, uh, that, uh, communities, uh, that are not, uh, powerful, that are not connected, that are not advantaged and are largely not white, you know, historically have not, uh, had, uh, uh, as, as ready access to healthcare services. This is, I think is a way to assure that in this very important public health, uh, measure that, um, those, uh, communities, um, in the course of that pandemic are the ones who are really on the front lines. A lot of essential workers, a lot of people have to go to work. A lot of people who don't have the flexibility to work from home, you know, those people have, uh, equal access, ready access to the vaccine as well. Speaker 1: 06:43 And for people who are interested, where can they read these public appeals about the vaccine, Speaker 2: 06:48 If you go to the state, uh, public health website, but if you just Google California department of public health, they have the big COVID page. You kind of drill down into that. And you'll see a link to the, uh, vaccine advisory committee. If you go to their, they have grouped and publish all of the comments that they get. So there's a letter in there from the chief justice of the Supreme court saying the court people should be given a priority placement all the way to individuals, you know, be even people writing in one or two sentence things saying, you know, my, my grandson has a disability. I really need to get them a vaccine. Where do I go? Uh, and individual workers. There's a very, uh, powerful one from a commercial fishermen saying, look, I work on a boat, uh, you know, as close quarters, uh, we're part of the food supply and you know, how can I get vaccinated? It's a real window into sort of where we are collectively. And in some cases individually in the state, uh, during this pandemic right now, Speaker 1: 07:45 Right? And I've been speaking with San Diego union Tribune reporter, Greg Moran, Greg. Thank you. Speaker 2: 07:50 You're welcome.