(Reuters) – The advisory panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday recommended that critical workers and people 75 years and older should be in the next line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices (ACIP) voted 13 to 1 to recommend 30 million critical workers, which includes first responders, teachers, food and agriculture, manufacturing, the U.S. Postal Service, public transport, and grocery store staff. for the vaccines.
In total, the move would make 51 million people eligible for inoculated in the next round. It was not immediately clear when the next round would start, however.
Approximately 200 million people should include non-linear workers such as those in the media, finance, energy and IT & communications industries, those in the 65-74 age group, and those aged 16 -64 years with high-risk conditions to be in the next round, the panel recommended.
The group had already recommended that frontline health care workers and nursing home residents be the first priority groups.
Coronavirus mortality rates are highest in older adults, with the population 75-years and older making up 25% of COVID-19-related hospitals, according to a working group established by the advisory panel about vaccine distribution.
Referring to the small number of doses available, the task force broke down essential workers into front and offline workers.
States, the ones that distribute photos to their residents, use ACIP guidelines to guide their decisions on how they can dispense doses of Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccines while and supply is scarce.
States have a wide choice in how they can classify essential workers and more than 20 large businesses have lobbied authorities to put their employees in front of the line, a Reuters study found.
While vaccine supply has been limited so far, federal authorities have said production will ramp up in the coming months. Officials for U.S. Operation Warp Speed have said they will distribute enough doses to get 100 million Americans vaccinated by the end of February.
Federal authorities began delivering the first 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer Inc vaccine on Dec. 13. They plan to dispense 2 million additional doses this week in addition to the 5.9 million doses of the Moderna Inc vaccine.
Even after these doses are released, more than half of the country ‘s 21 million health care workers and 3 million nursing home residents will still be needed.
Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; Edited by Daniel Wallis, Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall