Coming Tuesday: An idea who will get first COVID-19 vaccines

The 14-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group of medical experts advising CDC, is expected to recommend Tuesday who should receive the first limited supplies of COVID-19 vaccines. These individuals are likely to be health workers and residents at nursing homes. ACIP will discuss plans for distributing the doses and tracking possible adverse effects, and will then vote on who should get the first doses. Some states have been waiting for ACIP’s recommendations before determining how they will allocate COVID-19 vaccine supplies. States have until Friday to inform the federal government where it should send their initial doses. ACIP is convening the emergency meeting as FDA considers authorizing the use of vaccines made by Moderna and by Pfizer with its partner BioNTech. Both vaccines were demonstrated to be more than 94% effective and generally safe in late-stage testing and could be authorized within weeks. Pfizer and BioNTech expect to deliver approximately 25 million doses by year’s end, potentially enough for roughly 12.5 million people nationwide, while Moderna plans to deliver about 20 million doses. If the directors of CDC and HHS endorse ACIP’s recommendations, they would become official agency policy. State and local authorities are not required to implement the recommendations on who should receive the vaccines, but they are expected to serve as guidance. The federal government says it intends to distribute doses to states based on the size of their adult populations.