Who gets the COVID-19 vaccine first? Only 12 states follow CDC guidelines on order or priority

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that frontline health workers and residents of long-term care facilities include the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine.

Next are people over 75 and essential non-health care workers, including first responders, grocery store workers, teachers and transport workers, the CDC said.

The third group: people aged 65 to 74, and those aged 16 to 64 with high-risk medical conditions, and any essential workers not included in the first two batches.

But while all states follow the first batch of vaccinations to the letter, not all states follow these guidelines after that.

In fact, only 14 states are sticking strictly to all of the CDC’s recommendations about who should be included in the second-level priority group for vaccinations, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most states have included adults over 65 in this group.

And only 12 states (Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin) stick to all of the CDC’s recommendations across all three priority levels. .

“In some cases, states are expanding and simplifying priority groups,” the report says. “But, in other cases, states create new, more complex clustering of priorities.”

This could “cause greater difficulty in the implementation of vaccine distribution plans and make it more difficult to communicate these plans to the public,” the report concludes.

“Access to COVID-19 vaccines during these first months of the US vaccination campaign can largely depend on where you live,” he added.

• 10 states include additional first responders in addition to those working directly in health care (Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming).

• 4 states add seniors to the first batch of vaccinations, including those 65 and over (Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and West Virginia).

• In Utah, teachers and educators were among the first to receive coronavirus vaccines, along with healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities. In neighboring states, teachers and educators may have to wait several months to get vaccinated.

• Law enforcement officials and firefighters from 10 states – Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming – are included in the first-level vaccination group.

• Tennessee includes people who cannot live independently and people over the age of 75 in its first level priority group.

• In Massachusetts and New Jersey, incarcerated people have priority access.

The Kaiser Family Foundation or KFF is a nonprofit organization, headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Related: Healthcare workers are supposed to get COVID-19 vaccines first – medical students, dentists and school nurses are pushing to be on this list

These disparities are just a few of the many examples of how different states allocate early doses of the Pfizer PFE / BioNTech BNTX and Moderna MRNA vaccines.

“The recommendations were formulated with these goals in mind: to reduce death and serious illness as much as possible; preserve the functioning of society; [and] reduce the additional burden that COVID-19 places on people already facing disparities, ”notes the CDC.

States are not required to follow the committee’s recommendations, but health experts urge governors to stick to ACIP’s recommendations going forward as it gives them a scientific framework to follow that may ultimately help. to end the pandemic more quickly.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia immunize health workers and long-term care residents first, as recommended by ACIP. But at least 16 states allow other groups to be vaccinated simultaneously, according to an analysis released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care think tank.

“In some cases, states are expanding and simplifying priority groups. But, in other cases, states create new, more complex priority groupings, ”wrote researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“As with many decisions about how best to respond to the pandemic, there are tradeoffs here,” they added. “Identifying specific priority groups can target a limited vaccine supply more effectively, but also lead to greater difficulty in implementing vaccine distribution plans and make it more difficult to communicate these plans to the public.”