Philadelphia Medicine Fall 2020 - 9

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According to Cohn, the vaccine will be available in stages and
administered into a network of facilities starting with hospitals.
The distribution will adjust as the volume of
vaccine doses increases.
"We anticipate a limited amount of doses will
be available," Cohn said. "That will be challenging
during that period of time, because we will want to
ensure that the prioritized groups - the groups of
individuals who ACIP, with the input of multiple other
organizations - are the groups that are vaccinated early.
This will include a tightly focused administration."
There will be three phases of vaccine release:
Phase 1, hospitals: health care workers can
come and get vaccinated as well as other emergency
response workers.
Phase 2, other health care: "We want to make sure
there is a broad administration network which can
ensure that all individuals have access to vaccine," Cohn said. "This
would expand beyond our initial populations, including pharmacies,
doctors' offices and clinics, public health sites, mobile clinics and
targeted communities."
Phase 3, total distribution: this is for the general public sometime in early 2021. "We will want to get vaccine out everywhere
we possibly can."
The CDC anticipates having vaccine products, not at the end
of this year, Cohn said, but over time next year that can easily be
distributed in providers' offices.

Marks of the FDA believes the vaccine could be ready to administer to health-care providers sometime between mid-November
and mid-December, but definitely by the year's end.
Cohn of the CDC believes it will be available in early,
possibly January, 2021.
"I think we'll see some vaccine in December,"
said Dr. Caroline Johnson, acting deputy health
commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Public
Health. "I think we are going to have our hands full
going with the highest priority groups to get them
immunized."
By January and February, she said, "we start to see
this reach-out into the community to allow people
who don't meet the highest priority grouping but who
are very interested in getting vaccine. Maybe they
personally see some risk, or they are just pro-vaccine,
which I am all for that. We are probably thinking
about February-March before we see a bigger release
into the community."
Many of the vaccines under development are dual-dose.
"I was really hoping for that Johnson & Johnson vaccine because
of the single dose," Johnson said.
However, testing was recently suspended for the company's
vaccine because of adverse reactions.
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Fall 2020 : Philadelphia Medicine

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Philadelphia Medicine Fall 2020

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