As COVID vaccines are being rolled out, one extremely vulnerable group is being overlooked: millions of cancer patients. Doctors are sounding the alarm that many state governments and the federal advisory committee tasked with prioritizing who gets vaccinated should bring cancer patients to the front line, right after nursing home residents and primary care health workers. Currently, they are considered a lower priority than “essential workers,” such as firefighters, public transportation workers and possibly even supermarket workers.
Still, cancer patients are decimated by COVID-19. New data from 360 US hospitals shows that cancer patients are at greater risk of contracting the disease than the rest of the population. Once infected, they are almost twice as likely to be hospitalized.
Even worse, according to new findings in the journal JAMA Oncology, they are three times as likely to die as other hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
New York lung specialist Daniel Libby explains that cancer patients are likely to become infected often because they tend to visit doctor’s offices. Also, their “defense mechanisms are low”, which means that their immune system is weaker.
This week, the COVID Lung Cancer Consortium, a group of oncologists, is calling on the FBI to rethink its priorities and “pay specific attention to this vulnerable population.”
Gov. Cuomo should do the same. Last week, Cuomo launched the “Vaccine Equity Task Force,” which includes immigrant lawyers, civil rights leaders, tenants ‘associations, workers’ groups and churches, most of which are political allies of the governor. But no cancer organizations made the list.
“We are now talking about who gets vaccinated, and let me be clear, there is no politics in the vaccination process,” said Cuomo. It’s hard to believe, Governor, when you consider who’s on the task force and who’s missing.
Cancer patients are ignored in New York and most states. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Cancer Society urged the federal advisory committee to make vaccination of cancer patients a top priority, but the committee’s recommendation, announced Dec. 20, prioritized key workers and people aged 75 years and older to be next. That means that most cancer patients have to wait months longer.
Fred Hirsch, a renowned lung cancer specialist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is investigating whether cancer patients’ weakened immune systems cause them to produce fewer antibodies when vaccinated.
They may need more vaccinations – three or even four injections, instead of the two injections currently prescribed for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Every reason to help them get started.
Meanwhile, politically linked unions in New York that represent transit workers and supermarket workers are calling on state officials to be considered “ essential workers. ”
But cancer doctors complain that they are in the dark about who to call or when they will receive vaccines. Ditto for doctors treating patients with other illnesses. A Westchester woman tells me she is concerned about her husband. He is 71, has type 1 diabetes and two heart stents, and is traveling to Gotham on Metro North. His doctors don’t know when they will receive vaccines. She says, “I can’t believe 20-year-old supermarket employees are getting it for him.”
Both the Federal Vaccine Committee and Cuomo defend giving priority to “essential workers” because it means that more minorities should be vaccinated. Cuomo claims that “black, Hispanic, Asian and low-income communities paid the highest price during COVID-19.” That is a politically convenient exaggeration.
According to the data, minorities are only slightly more affected by COVID than other people. In New York State, excluding the Big Apple, Hispanics make up 12 percent of the population and 12 percent of COVID deaths, while blacks make up 9 percent of the population and 15 percent of the deaths. In New York City, blacks and Hispanic minorities have proportionally more deaths than whites, but only by a few percentage points. Asians experienced fewer deaths (7 percent) than their 14 percent share of the population.
COVID is an equal opportunity killer. It is the slaughter of cancer patients, regardless of their skin color.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lieutenant Governor of New York.