Coronavirus: Johns Hopkins Report Ranks Groups to Be Vaccinated

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The vaccine against the novel coronavirus is the most expected event of the year. But doubts remain and many people are concerned: who will be immunized first?

A report prepared by the prestigious Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in the United States recommended that some groups should be prioritized for vaccination. According to experts, once a vaccine is approved, supply will be limited at the outset, even if there is more than one option. Bottlenecks in the manufacturing process stages, including shortage of vials and syringes, or issues in the bottling and finishing process, could cause delays in vaccine availability.

The first group includes professionals essential to sustain the ongoing response to Covid-19. These are doctors, nurses and emergency healthcare workers and people working in vaccine production, distribution and administration. This group should also include the vulnerable, such as people over 65, those living with them or their caregivers and pregnant women, for instance.

In the second group are health professionals who are not directly involved in the response to the coronavirus, such as pharmacy staff; people living away from healthcare facilities, such as indigenous peoples; employees in key sectors, such as electricity and sanitation; courier teams; and the military and police.

There is also a third profile: those who perform essential social duties, such as teachers, public transport workers, and food suppliers. “Prioritizing these people would probably block greater overall damage,” says the report signed by health safety experts, vaccine researchers, bioethicists and experts in patient safety and access to vaccines.

The Johns Hopkins team recommends that even within the priority groups, there should be ratings. “There probably won’t be enough vaccines offered to all members of the Level 1 candidate groups to be available simultaneously,” the report says.

Although the report is directed at the US government, its recommendations are for any country that needs to implement a mass vaccination strategy against the disease, including Brazil. In June, the Ministry of Health said that soon after the vaccine is approved and the first doses are available, there will be a vaccination campaign “prioritizing more vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people with comorbidities, healthcare professionals, teachers, security professionals, indigenous peoples, public transport drivers and people deprived of their liberty,” said Arnaldo Correia de Medeiros, the Ministry of Health’s National Health Surveillance Secretary.

Currently, 169 vaccines against the novel coronavirus are under development, according to the World Health Organization. Of these, 30 are in the human clinical trials phase and six are in phase 3, the last required by regulatory authorities for approval.

Pandemic coronavirus in Brazil

Currently, Brazil counts 3,622,861 cases and 115,309 deaths from the disease. On Monday, August 24th, the rolling average of new notifications of the disease stood at 37,613 and that of new deaths at 967.6. The weekly rolling average is based on the sum of the number of cases and deaths over the past seven days, divided by seven, the number of days of the period accounted for – which enables a better assessment by annulling daily variations in the recording and sending of data by public health bodies, a problem that occurs mainly on weekends.