States holding key vaccine discussions in closed meetings

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — As the nation's COVID-19 vaccination campaign accelerates, governors, public health directors and committees advising them are holding key discussions behind closed doors, including debates about who should be eligible for the shots and how best to distribute them.

A review by The Associated Press finds that advisory committees created to help determine how to prioritize limited doses have held closed meetings in at least 13 states that are home to more than 70 million people.

In at least 15 other states, the meetings have been open to the public, the AP found. But even in those states, governors and health departments can modify or override committee recommendations with little or no public explanation. In several others, governors and their staffs make decisions without formal advisory bodies to guide them.

The lack of transparency raises the risk that some decisions will be grounded in politics rather than public health and that well-connected industries could receive special treatment while the concerns of marginalized groups are ignored.

“You don’t want to have ‘God squads’ making these decisions about life and death without any kind of public oversight or public accountability,” said Oregon State University professor Courtney Campbell, an expert in bioethics.

In Iowa, the governor moved legislators and other Capitol employees ahead of inmates and correctional officers on the vaccine priority list, despite at least 19 coronavirus deaths among state prisoners and staff. In Oregon, the governor prioritized teachers for shots before the elderly without seeking a recommendation from an advisory committee that has debated other sensitive topics publicly.

Campbell praised the Oregon panel's transparency and commitment to equity but criticized the lack of public deliberation that...