Prioritizing COVID-19 vaccine distribution
Who gets COVID-19 vaccine first will be a challenge for governmental organizations as well as bioethicists, who have proposed different strategies for fairly prioritizing different groups for access.
Reaching communities of color will be an important consideration for prioritization, according to Dr. Maves, given the disproportionate burden of disease on Black and Hispanic individuals, among other such populations.
COVID-19–related hospitalization rates have been substantially higher in communities of color, Dr. Fauci said in his keynote address. Age-adjusted hospitalization rates for Hispanic/Latinx and Black populations are 375 to 368 per 100,000, respectively, compared with just 82 per 100,000 for White non-Hispanics, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Outreach to those communities should include building trust in those populations that they will benefit from a safe and effective vaccine, and making sure that the vaccine is available to those communities as quickly as possible, Dr. Maves said.
Dr. Fauci and Dr. Maves provided no disclosures related to their presentations.