Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three d and twenty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. Healthcare workers were among the first priority for vaccinations in the US, but thousands of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals say that if they're not affiliated with major hospitals, they're likely to miss out. But first,
here's what happened in virus News Today. New York City broke down its COVID nineteen vaccination data by ethnicity for the first time that revealed profound racial disparities in who's getting the shots. White residents made up almost half of the people who have received at least one dose, despite consisting of only a third of the population. Latinos of the city only accounted for fifteen percent of those vaccinated.
The lowest ratio was among Black residents. Even though they make up almost a quarter of the city's population, they only accounted for eleven percent of those vaccinated. The percentage of Asians among all vaccinated residents was similar to their representation in the city. A top health advisor to President Joe Biden warned Sunday that the highly transmissible UK variant of the coronavirus will likely become the dominant strain in
the US. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on nb CS Meet the Press that the nation's health care system must pair for a surge in serious cases, such as the one experienced recently in England. Finally, the US added about a hundred and forty four thousand COVID nineteen cases on Saturday, fewer than the average of over
the preceding seven days. The data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg are further evidence the pandemic is slowing in the US and now for today's main story. Since fiser and MODERNA vaccine shipments in the US began in mid December, the priority has been doctors, nurses, and other professionals likely to come in contact with the novel coronavirus, but healthcare workers who aren't with hospitals and major health
systems say they're being overlooked. I spoke to reporter a Lease Young about why thousands of healthcare workers are still seeking vaccinations even as states and cities open eligibility two people far removed from the pandemics frontline. Throughout the U S. Shipments of say the Fiser and MODERNA vaccine have been distributed to doctors, nurses, other health professionals, but there is a significant population of medical workers who are not having
an easy time accessing vaccines. Can you tell us a bit about this. The priority has been from the beginning to vaccinate healthcare workers, but states made those healthcare workers those who are affiliated with hospitals, and the reason for that largely is because hospitals had the ability to store some of the vaccines, which of course require super cold temperatures um and then it was kind of an afterthought, oh what do we do about these folks who aren't
hospital employees. So we've seen in recent weeks that many U S states have begun to expand eligibility for vaccines. But how has that been impacting these professional health workers who aren't affiliated with, for example, large scale health systems or hospitals. The US has added tremendous numbers of people
who are not healthcare workers. In some states, such as Florida, they said, if you are over sixty five, regardless of whether you have any medical conditions come on in if in some states have have said, you know, tax collectors should should get the vaccine, forest rangers should get the vaccine. The vaccine was scarce enough before you added these folks, and now you've got them competing with the front line workers who are actually at great risk of being exposed
to the virus. Now, as you mentioned, you know a lot of for example, general practitioners or family doctors. These are people who do not work often in hospital settings,
but are still very much frontline workers. What kind of data do we have about how this group of medical professionals has been affected thus far by COVID nineteen there was a study done by the University at Pennsylvania's Medical School about six months ago that found that healthcare workers um made up a significant portion of folks who are dying of COVID, and among those, twenty seven percent of about a thousand physician deaths were primary doctors and others
who don't work in hospitals. The study said that the hospital workers had a lot of access to protective personal protective equipment that folks working in independent offices might not have. And I was wondering if you could just maybe give us a bit of color um some anecdotes perhaps about what some of these, in many cases unaffiliated medical professionals have had to do and to try and get themselves vaccinated.
We spoke to a doctor in Florida, a pediatrician, who said it took him about a month after the vaccinations first became available for himself to schedule an appointment, and as of yesterday, his physicians assistant, who he says sees more sick children than he does, has not been able to get his first shot. I also spoke to a dentist on Long Island who got his first and his next doses due on Wednesday, and he still doesn't have
a second appointment. One of his office workers was lucky enough to score an appointment at a megacite on Long Island, UH and was all set to go, and then the megacites sent out a notice saying, sorry, we're open, just two employees. We made a mistake, so she had to cancel. And and let's look at this from the distribution angle.
You know, what efforts have been made now that we know that there are these these issues with many medical professionals having trouble getting access to vaccines, what efforts have been made to try and help these this population get vaccinated. In Pennsylvania, the health chief ordered hospitals to set aside ten percent of their vaccine doses for non affiliated staff. Haven't been able to determine yet how successful that's been, and Pennsylvania is the only state that I was able
to find that has done that. We have heard reports that some medical professionals are are hesitant about receiving the vaccine. But but this is a slightly different issue in that these professionals are are wanting to be vaccinated but are unable to do so. Can you can you tell us a bit about that. In New Jersey, we got reports around Christmas time that hospital staff we're not eager to get the vaccine because they did not want to feel any side effects around the holidays. And then we have
found that sentiment around the US. UH, some health professionals have said, we don't we don't really want to be the guinea pig here, so we will wait to see what kind of effects there are. But my colleagues spoke to a an executive medical director at Oak Street Health in the Chicago area YEA, and he said that there's really broad exceptions from the traveling nurses and nurse practitioners and infusion specialists. They're saying, outright, how can I get vaccinated? Um?
And there's also some concern that these folks could be at greater risk because if you're working in a hospital setting, you're working among people who have been vaccinated largely, and patients have been tested, and folks coming in for for elective surgery have been screened before they come in. When you're a primary care doctor, somebody makes an appointment and comes into your office, you can ask them some questions, but you're probably not going to spot test them right there.
That was at least young and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Magnus Heentrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported
by Elise Young. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.