Health care workers and residents of nursing homes around the country have started to receive the very first doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
This week an advisory panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made recommendations about which frontline essential workers — those in jobs that put them at the highest risk — should be next.
On the short list: people who staff food and agriculture supply chains, firefighters, those in law enforcement and teachers.
There have been questions about where educators should be on the list as they technically can work remotely, though distance learning has created other problems.
States will have the final say about when teachers get vaccinated. Utah for example, is already planning to vaccinate all educators in January.
But teachers may not be considered essential frontline workers under some state guidelines, said labor economist Francine Blau at Cornell University.
“These categories are nuanced,” she said. “So we have to consider — is remote education a possibility? What are the downsides to remote education for the students themselves but also for their families?”
Blau co-authored a National Bureau of Economic Research paper about which workers should be considered frontline. She said teachers may not be as at risk as, say, meatpacking staff. They can work at home, as many have been for months.
But shutting down in-person learning has brought other complications, said health policy professor Lisa Prosser at the University of Michigan.
“We are especially concerned about disruptions in in-person schooling that there may be very long-term effects, especially in these vulnerable communities,” she said.
Remote school has amplified existing economic disparities, said Prosser, and made it hard for many parents, especially women, to work.
But simply vaccinating teachers may not automatically make schools safe, said Harley Litzelman, a high school teacher in Oakland, California.
“If there’s uncontrolled spread in a community, there’s going to be something similar in schools,” he said.
While kids are at lower risk of severe disease, they have been found to spread the virus. Current vaccines have only been authorized for adults. Clinical trials to prove efficacy in children began in October, meaning it will likely be well into next year before many students can be immunized.
Which essential workers should be prioritized for vaccines?
Americans have started to receive doses of the first COVID-19 vaccine. Front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities will be first to get the shots, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. Essential workers will be considered next, but with limited vaccine doses and a lot of workers considered essential, the jockeying has already started over which ones should go to the front of the line: meatpacking workers, pilots, bankers and ride-share drivers among them. The CDC will continue to consider how to best distribute the vaccine, but ultimately it’s up to each state to decide who gets the shots when.
Could relaxing patents help poorer countries get vaccines faster?
The world’s poorest countries may not be able to get any vaccine at all until 2024, by one estimate. To deliver vaccines to the world’s poor sooner that, some global health activists want to waive intellectual property protections on vaccines, medicines and diagnostics. India, South Africa and Kenya have asked the World Trade Organization to allow pharmaceutical plants in the developing world to manufacture patented drugs without having to worry about lawsuits. The United States, Britain and the European Union, have repeatedly rejected the proposal at the WTO.
The Pfizer vaccine has to be kept in extreme cold at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. And keeping it that cold requires dry ice. Where does that dry ice come from?
Also, is there enough of it to go around? And how much is it going to cost? The demand for dry ice is about to spike, and a whole bunch of industries are worried. Now, dry ice sells for $1 to $3 a pound. While the vaccine gets priority, smaller businesses and nonessential industries may end up losing out.
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December 22, 2020 at 06:45AM
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Teachers move near the front of the line for vaccine - Marketplace
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