According to Dr Celine Gounder, who is a member of Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisory board, the President-elect will let health experts decide who will get a COVID-19 vaccine in the country first. The Indian-American infectious disease physician said that since the risk for COVID-19 can vary among different groups of people, prioritisation for a vaccine will be tricky, and Biden will leave the decision to the health experts, reported news agency PTI.

“That’s where it gets a bit more political and frankly, this is where the President-elect is leaving it to the public health experts and scientists to figure out how best to allocate the limited supply first,” said Gounder, who was named by Biden earlier this month to his coronavirus advisory board.

It is expected that there will likely be a limited supply of coronavirus vaccine doses available immediately after a vaccine is authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration.

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“Other than health care workers, others who will be first in line to get it will be people who do have chronic underlying medical conditions who are older, as well as communities of colour who have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic,” PTI quoted Gounder as saying.

“Now among those groups is where it starts to get a little bit more contentious,” she added. “How do you prioritise between the 85-year-old woman in a nursing home, versus the 65-year-old African American — especially when that 65-year-old may be as just as high-risk of significant disease?” The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunisation Practices (ACIP) will recommend groups to receive the vaccine first.

America’s death toll since the pandemic’s start is now more than 264,000. And nearly another 60,000 people could lose their lives over the next three weeks, according to an ensemble forecast published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week.

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The ACIP called an emergency meeting for December 1, where they will vote on the very first group to get a vaccine.

Typically, the ACIP meets after a vaccine is authorised by the FDA to make recommendations, but they are working proactively in anticipation of a quick decision by the FDA, the report said.

US pharmaceutical major Pfizer has applied to the FDA for emergency use authorisation for its vaccine. An independent panel of experts, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, is slated to meet on December 10 to discuss the application, the report said.

FDA officials say a decision should be made within a few weeks of the meeting and possibly much sooner.