LETTER: Health workers deserve consideration when it comes to vaccine

I heard on the morning news that states are unlikely to receive enough of the COVID-19 vaccines in this first shipment to cover all health workers. As states determine the order in which to distribute the vaccine to vulnerable populations, I hope they are looking at not only which subgroups to place first, but also giving the vaccine to only those who are most vulnerable in that subgroup.

For health workers, all patient-contact workers — certainly those working in emergency rooms and COVID treatment areas — should go before those who work in back-room support positions. Then they can consider those most vulnerable (older, with co-morbidities) within that subgroup. The same is true for first-responders. Because the most vulnerable are those who are older with co-morbidities, they should go before the younger, healthy members of that subgroup.

Also, for populations that never leave their current location (prisoners, long-term care and nursing home residents), a recent study described in last week’s Review Journal showed that the staff and anyone regularly entering the facility should, by all means, be vaccinated. However, the immunity outcomes were the same when the residents of these facilities were not vaccinated as when they were.

Also, I seem to remember hearing that there is a point-of-care COVID test that will show whether COVID antibodies exist in the blood, with results in approximately 15 minutes. That would mean the person who has those antibodies would have had COVID and was either asymptomatic or had such mild symptoms that they did not take a test for COVID. If this is true, could we test everyone before giving them the vaccine? Then we would not be wasting a limited vaccine on someone is already immune.