First in line for the Covid vaccine? Some American healthcare workers say no

They can go to the frontline for a COVID-19 vaccine if they choose, but some U.S. health workers are skeptical of taking a vaccine that has been developed in record time, even as the pandemic rages on. .

Some want more time, despite assurances from experts that they trust the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine verification process.

“I think I will take the vaccine later, but at the moment I’m a little wary of it,” nurse Yolanda Dodson, 55, told AFP.

Dodson works at Montefiore Hospital in New York City and has spent spring in the midst of the deadly fight against the virus.

The vaccine studies so far “look promising but I don’t think there is enough data yet,” Dodson said.

“We must be grateful to those who are willing to submit to take this risk” to participate in the studies, she said. “It’s a very personal decision.”

Diana Torres is a nurse at a Manhattan hospital who has seen several of her colleagues die from the novel coronavirus this spring.

She is particularly wary of vaccines rushed for approval under the Trump administration, which she says has handled the entire pandemic as “some kind of joke.”

“This is a vaccine that was developed in less than a year and approved under the same administration and government agencies that allowed the virus to spread like wildfire,” Torres said.

“They didn’t have enough time and staff to study the vaccine,” she said.

“This time, I’m going to drop by and watch how it goes.”

Clinical trial data has shown that two vaccines – one developed by Pfizer and BioNtech, the other by Moderna and the U.S. National Institutes of Health – are about 95% effective.

Normally, the FDA requires six months of follow-up, but if no side effects appear in the first two months, it’s rare to see anything in the next four – and the raging pandemic has changed the risk calculations – profits.

There were 44,000 volunteers in the Pfizer trial and 30,000 at Moderna, and the data was protected by a corporate firewall and analyzed by experts without political pressure.

‘Guinea pigs’

The nursing colleagues commenting on Torres’ Facebook page seemed equally skeptical.

“They failed miserably with PPE (personal protective equipment) and testing and now they want you to be guinea pigs for the vaccine,” a friend wrote.

Such reservations are common among the 20 million healthcare workers in the United States – the country hardest hit by the pandemic with more than 272,000 dead – said Marcus Plescia, chief medical examiner for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO).

“There are a lot of people who think we don’t have enough data yet,” he said.

And yet many of the same people say, “I’m going to get this (vaccine), but I’m going to wait a while.”

This reluctance “could end up being a very big problem,” Plescia said, especially since hospitals are unlikely to be able to force their employees to take the photos.

There is a danger when too few people, including health workers, get vaccinated, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

“It’s the whole anti-vax movement of people who are skeptical about vaccines. On top of that, you’ve added skepticism about it,” he said Wednesday.

A late October-early November Gallup poll found that only 58% of Americans would take a COVID-19 vaccine if it became immediately available, up from 50% in September.

That reluctance led New York and six other states to create their own commission to assess vaccine safety, Cuomo said.

‘Ethical obligation’

“Most of us feel there is an ethical obligation to get vaccinated,” Plescia said.

“Not only are we a very large workforce, but healthcare workers care for the very vulnerable” – and healthcare professionals would hate to see them get sick.

New Jersey radiologist Mohamed Sfaxi, whose rural hospital has seen an influx of COVID patients over the past three weeks, is among those trying to convince his reluctant colleagues to get vaccinated.

“We have suspicious people, we have to talk to them and explain the data to them,” said Sfaxi, 57.

Many people, he said, are worried about the new “messenger RNA” technology used in vaccines from Pfizer and Modern, which hijack human cells and efficiently turn them into vaccine factories using little genetic information.

Sfaxi says some also fear the vaccines have been developed so quickly.

However, the reason it has gone so fast is simply “because science has made progress and the whole world has focused on it,” he said.

Disturbed by the images he sees every day of the lungs of patients damaged by the new coronavirus, Sfaxi said he planned to be vaccinated as quickly as possible, without “any hesitation”.

Then he will test himself regularly for antibodies.

“This will allow me to see when I start having an immune reaction … and to have a little less anxiety,” he said.

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© 2020 AFP