US panel tackles race, poverty in virus vaccine priorities

A U.S. advisory panel made recommendations Friday for who should be first in line to get COVID-19 vaccine, including a plea for special efforts by states and cities to get the shots to low-income minority groups.

As expected, the panel recommended health care workers and first responders get first priority when vaccine supplies are limited. The shots should be provided free to all, the panel said. And throughout the vaccine campaign, efforts also should focus on disadvantaged areas to remedy racial health disparities.

“Inequity has been a hallmark of this pandemic, both locally and globally,” said the report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, noting “an awakening to the power of racism, poverty, and bias in amplifying the health and economic pain and hardship imposed by this pandemic.”

The coronavirus outbreak has hit Black, Hispanic and Native Americans disproportionately in hospitalizations and deaths. Reasons are complex, but the disparities are thought to stem from minorities working in jobs on the front lines, having medical conditions associated with severe disease, higher rates of poverty and poor access to health care.

The report's authors saw their work as “one way to address these wrongs,” they wrote.

“Everybody knows from the news how deadly this has been for minorities," panel co-chair William Foege of Emory Rollins School of Public Health said Friday. "We said it’s racism that is the root cause of this problem.”

Federal health officials will have the final say on distributing the 300 million vaccine doses the government is buying under the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed. In practice, state and local health departments ultimately will have control over where they set up vaccination clinics.

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