Who is really ‘first in line’ for the vaccine? It depends on your state.
The FDA has authorized the Pfizer vaccine. Health-care workers and nursing home residents could receive the first doses within days, but being in the top tier does not guarantee instant access.
The easy part was deciding who should receive the very first doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Few people could disagree with the wisdom of prioritizing health-care personnel or nursing home residents, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to do on December 3. It’s a bid to safeguard our finite pool of frontline medical workers, as well as the most vulnerable people.
Even the planning part seemed smooth. It’s straightforward to vaccinate health-care employees because they usually work in the same place, and medical centers had plenty of practice administering flu shots en masse. As for group living centers, the CDC had already brokered a unique partnership with drug store chains Walgreens and CVS, whose employees were set to
