(Reuters) – An advisory panel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday recommended that front-line workers and those 75 and older should be next in line to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 13 to 1 to recommend 30 million essential frontline workers, including first responders, teachers, food and agriculture, manufacturing, US Postal Service, public transportation, and grocery store workers, as the next priority for the vaccines.
The move would make a total of 51 million people eligible for inoculation in the next round. However, it was not immediately clear when the next round would start.
About 200 million people, including non-frontline workers such as those in the media, financial, energy, and IT and communications industries, those in the 65-74 age group, and those 16-64 years old in high-risk conditions in the next round, recommended the panel.
The group had already recommended that primary care health workers and nursing home residents be the first priority groups.
The death rate from coronavirus is highest in older adults, with the population aged 75 and older accounting for 25% of COVID-19-associated hospital admissions, according to a working group set up by the Vaccine Distribution Advisory Panel.
Referring to the limited availability of the doses, the working group divided essential workers into frontline and non-frontline workers.
States, handing out shots to their residents, will use the ACIP guidelines as a guideline for their decisions on how to allocate doses of Pfizer Inc’s and Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccines while supplies are scarce.
States have wide discretion to classify essential workers and more than 20 major industries have lobbied authorities to get their workers up front, an analysis by Reuters found.
While the supply of vaccines has been limited so far, federal authorities have said production will increase in the coming months. Officials at US Operation Warp Speed have said they will dispense enough doses by the end of February to get 100 million Americans vaccinated.
Federal authorities began shipping the first 2.9 million doses of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine on Dec. 13. They expect to distribute an additional 2 million doses this week, as well as 5.9 million doses of Moderna Inc.’s vaccine.
Even after those doses are divided, more than half of the 21 million health workers and 3 million nursing home residents need to be vaccinated.
Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; Edited by Daniel Wallis, Lisa Shumaker, and Sonya Hepinstall