First vaccine shipments won’t be enough to cover priority group

Pfizer’s vaccine could get the green light from the Food and Drug Administration in just days, but the first shipments will fall very short of vaccinating people in the first priority group.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended front-line health care workers and those living in nursing homes to get the vaccine first. But since there won’t be enough, states have to triage and choose which health care workers are a higher priority than others.

Washington expects 62,400 doses in the first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine and up to 200,000 by December. Each person needs two doses to be vaccinated. But that’s nowhere near what the state needs to vaccinate its 500,000 health care workers and 33,000 people living in long-term care facilities.

“Our intent, in the beginning, is to definitely focus on those health care workers — workers in the health care setting that are either serving people who have COVID or caring for people who have COVID or interacting with suspected COVID cases,” said Michele Roberts, with Washington Department of Health.

“This is very historic and unprecedented,” Donna Jensen said.

Jensen is the chief nursing officer of Swedish Medical Group and is head of its COVID-19 vaccine planning team.

“Right now, we are working on making sure that we can identify who within that caregiver patient-facing group needs to be first up for allocation,” Jensen added.

Jensen thinks it could be up to two months before the state’s health care workers are vaccinated.

The FDA is expected to review Moderna’s vaccine on Dec. 17. The state hasn’t announced how much of the Moderna vaccine it will get.

Moderna’s phase 2 coronavirus vaccine trial volunteer Donald MacFarlane, 72, of Seattle, is sharing his experience to drum up support for the vaccine once it’s available.

“I wanted to participate because of my age. They hadn’t had any results for people over 71 to that point. So I just wanted to participate and see what I could do to help,” MacFarlane said.

MacFarlane said he had no reaction after his first dose. After his second dose, his shoulder was a little sore, and he had a fever that went away after a day.

He said he didn’t hesitate to sign up for the trial.

“If I could do anything to speed up the process of getting a vaccine out there, I was willing to do that,” MacFarlane said.

Cox Media Group