Health workers unsure about vaccine schedule

Dr. Biron Baker runs a family medicine clinic in Bismarck, N.D. Every day patients walk through the door, and any number of them could be sick with the coronavirus. Baker treats them anyway, doing the best he can with his small staff to keep from getting sick.

But as the nation’s daily death counts from the coronavirus shatter previous records and the vaccine rolls out for front-line health workers across the country this week, Baker and his staff are so far not among those scheduled to receive it — and they do not know when their turn will come.

“We haven’t heard a word from our state,” he said, adding that he had tried several times to call state officials for an answer but with no luck. “No email, no fax announcement, nothing at all,” he said.

The vaccine is perhaps the lone bright spot for the country as the coronavirus continues its rampage around the country and new data shows a jobless crisis far worse than in other recessions. Still, in the scramble to vaccinate millions of health workers, difficult choices about who comes first — and who must wait — have started to surface. So far, the effort is concentrated in hospitals. Workers treating COVID-19 patients in intensive care units and in emergency departments have in recent days been beaming symbols of the virus’s demise.

But there are roughly 21 million health care workers in the U.S., making up one of the country’s largest industries, and vaccinating everybody in the first wave would be impossible. That has left entire categories of workers — people who are also at risk for infection — wondering about their place in line.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has laid out categories but they are broad, so each state — and each hospital system — has come up with its own plan and priorities. The result has been a sometimes confusing constellation of rules and groupings that has left health care workers like Baker — as well as professional societies of groups such as pathologists, dentists and medical examiners — wondering where they stand.