When will PCPs receive a COVID-19 vaccine?

In the days following the emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, it was distributed to institutions nationwide, each of which had different plans for vaccine prioritization among health care workers.

While vaccination has already begun, varying prioritization plans have left some health care workers — including primary care physicians — wondering when they will be able to get the vaccine.

At some institutions, vaccination plans have led to concern among workers. Stanford Medicine, NPR reported, recently apologized in response to a protest from resident physicians in its health care system after just seven of 1,300 residents were planned to be included in the first round of vaccine distribution.

Recently, The New York Times reported that many health care workers and other essential workers have not been told when they will be eligible to receive the vaccine.

Biron Baker, MD, a family practice physician from Bismark, North Dakota, told The New York Times that he had not heard from state officials about when he and his staff will be able to receive the vaccine, even though he said that his staff see patients daily in an area with a high infection rate.

“We’re vulnerable and we are necessary,” he said.

When to expect it, where to get vaccinated

William Schaffner, MD, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Infectious Disease News Editorial Board member, told Healio Primary Care that while there is not a set time for when PCPs will be vaccinated, they and other community-based health care workers can expect it “shortly.”

As the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored in very cold temperatures, Schaffner said, it has been distributed to a small number of locations — primarily large health care systems — and vaccination efforts have focused on providers in these large health care systems first.

“Now, the Moderna vaccine has just received the emergency use authorization and will start to be distributed, and that one will be distributed much more widely,” Schaffner said. “That’s very important, because it will be going next, at least in our state (Tennessee), to smaller hospitals all over the state, including those in rural areas and to [city and county] health department offices.”

According to Schaffner, these smaller rural hospitals will likely make the vaccine available to physicians who practice there and to other health care providers in the area, or these providers can go to their local health department for vaccination once they are eligible.

The next group of eligible providers will likely be community physicians, which may not have a specific definition, but should include physicians working in the community and the medical staff in their clinic or offices, Schaffner said.

He added that dentists and their technicians may also be eligible for vaccination in this group, but “a lot of that will be determined on the amount of vaccine that is received.”

There is not an exact date on when the vaccine will be available to community-based health care workers, but Schaffner said it will likely be “fairly shortly in the first quarter of next year.”

Accepting vaccination

Schaffner noted that health authorities hope PCPs will be “enthusiastic” in their acceptance of the vaccine; however, they are unsure of the response in more rural areas and across specialties.

Most frontline health care providers who have been eligible for vaccination have accepted it, but he said that “it remains to be seen whether this carries over into medical professionals of all kinds who practice in the community, and then beyond them to the general population.”

Thus far, surveys on vaccine acceptance have led to results with a “decidedly mixed message,” Schaffner said.

He added that in the generation population, “there are two groups of people: the folks who are ready, willing and able to get vaccinated, and a very substantial group that, at this point, is reluctant to get vaccinated.”

These results were seen in a recent survey conducted by AP-NORC, which found that just 47% of people in the United States plan to get vaccinated once a vaccine is available to them, while 26% do not plan to get vaccinated and 27% remain unsure whether or not they will get vaccinated.

This has coincided with masking and other infection prevention measures.

“Once you get into our rural areas, it’s hard to find people wearing masks, despite the fact that the virus itself is spreading very intensely in our rural counties. By now, I can’t imagine there are very many people who live in rural Tennessee who don’t know someone who’s been infected and hospitalized or died,” Schaffner said. “But despite this, people are still not adopting these behavioral interventions of mask-wearing, social distancing, etc.”

References:

AP-NORC. Survey Methodology. https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/December-2020-Methodology.pdf. Accessed December 10, 2020.

AP-NORC. The December 2020 AP-NORC Center Poll. https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/topline_vaccine.pdf. Accessed December 10, 2020.

FDA. FDA Takes Additional Action in Fight Against COVID-19 By Issuing Emergency Use Authorization for Second COVID-19 Vaccine. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-additional-action-fight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-second-covid. Accessed December 21, 2020.

The New York Times. Some Health Care Workers Are Getting the Vaccine. Others Aren’t. Who Decides? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/us/covid-vaccine-health-workers.html. Accessed December 21, 2020.

NPR. Stanford Apologizes After Vaccine Allocation Leaves Out Nearly All Medical Residents. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/18/948176807/stanford-apologizes-after-vaccine-allocation-leaves-out-nearly-all-medical-resid. Accessed December 21, 2020.