The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month recommended that states vaccinate, after vaccinating health workers and residents of long-term care facilities, people over 75 and certain “frontline workers” who cannot do their jobs from home should. Only then, the CDC advised, should states turn to people ages 65 to 74 and adults of all ages with high-risk diseases. The CDC recommendations were not binding, but many states have largely followed them while demand far outstrips supply.
How Mr Azar’s enforcement threat will work is unclear. In two weeks, Mr. Biden will have been sworn in as President. Mr Azar said the upcoming Biden administration will be informed of the changes, although he added that Americans “are working with a government at a time and this is the approach we believe will best serve the mission.”
Mr Biden is expected to release details of his own vaccination schedule this week, which will include federal government-sponsored mass vaccination clinics. The Biden transition team declined to comment on the new Trump policy on Tuesday. However, a person familiar with the president-elect’s plans said Mr Biden also had plans to expand the universe of those eligible for vaccination.
Mr Azar said that people searching for gunfire because they are at high risk of disease are required to provide “some form of medical documentation as defined by the governors,” but he did not elaborate. A significant portion of the population suffers from conditions that the CDC has determined to increase the risk of serious Covid disease, starting with obesity, which affects at least 40 percent of adults.
Other people who would qualify for vaccines immediately under Mr Azar’s policy are more than 30 million adults with heart disease, 37 million with chronic kidney disease and 1 in 10 with diabetes.
The new distribution plan, first announced by Axios Tuesday morning, is a reversal for the Trump administration, which had withheld about half of its vaccine supplies – millions of vials – to ensure second doses were available. Mr Azar said the administration always expected to make the move if they were convinced of the supply chain.
Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Advisory Board, praised the government’s decision and compared the current situation to the Titanic, where there weren’t enough lifeboats to save everyone. “And you have to decide who you want to pass on. “
