[Free Beacon] A chief adviser for President-elect Joe Biden praised a federal recommendation for prioritizing minority groups in the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.
Marcella Nunez-Smith, a co-chair of Biden's COVID-19 advisory board, told the Washington Post that the board approves of the vaccine-distribution recommendations issued by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel on Sunday. She said she was "quite excited" about the "grounding in inequity" of the panel's guidance, referring to "the importance given to factors such as housing and minority status in decisions about prioritization."
The CDC panel's recommendation calls for frontline essential workers, such as grocery-store employees, teachers, and postal workers, to receive the vaccine next, along with adults aged 75 and older. The following phase would see millions more essential workers receive the vaccine at the same time as adults aged 65 to 74 and persons with high-risk medical conditions.
The prioritization of essential workers in the early vaccine phases is partly intended to fast-track vaccine distribution to minority groups, who make up a disproportionate share of essential workers, even though older members of the population are most at risk of dying from the coronavirus. The CDC panel cited the under-representation of minorities among older adults and the large share of minorities among essential workers in its deliberations over how to achieve the goal of mitigating "health inequities" through targeted vaccine allotment. |