Demand for Covid vaccines expected to get heated ? and fast

This month, even as a federal advisory group met to hash out guidelines for vaccine distribution, a long list of advocacy groups — representing home-based health workers and community health centers to patients with kidney disease — were lobbying state and federal officials in hope that their constituents would be prioritized for the first scarce doses."As we get closer to the vaccine being a reality, there's a lot of jockeying, to be sure," said Katie Smith Sloan, chief executive of LeadingAge, a nonprofit organization pushing for staff members and patients at long-term care centers to be in the highest-priority category.We're going to have some fights about high-risk groups.Certainly, some consumers remain wary, said Rupali Limaye, a social and behavioral health scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A panel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that the first shots go to the 21 million health care workers in the U.S. and to 3 million nursing home staff members and residents before it is rolled out to other groups based on a hierarchy of risk factors.Even before any vaccine is available, some people are trying to boost their chances of access, said Dr. Allison Kempe, an expert in vaccine dissemination who is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.