Pritzker lays out COVID vaccine plan

Health-care workers, long-term-care residents to get shots first, with focus on 50 counties with top death rates

COVID-19 vaccinations could begin within days of emergency FDA approval later this month. (Shutterstock)

By Ted Cox

The governor and his director of public health laid out the process to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine Friday, predicting it would take “many months” just to complete the first two phases including police and firefighters and those at high risk for the disease.

First, though, the state will target health-care workers and residents in long-term-care facilities, prioritizing the 50 counties that have the highest coronavirus death rates per capita.

Calling the two top vaccines set for authorization “astoundingly promising,” Gov. Pritzker said, “The prayer that we could have vaccines in relatively short order appears to have been answered.”

Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing at the Thompson Center in Chicago, Pritzker said the Pfizer vaccine has a hearing before the Food and Drug Administration next Thursday. It’s proven 95 percent effective in a trial of 43,000 people, but it requires ultra-cold temperatures for storage. A Moderna vaccine proved 94 percent effective in a trial of 30,000 people, but does not require storage in temperatures below that of an average freezer. It has an FDA hearing the following Thursday, Dec. 17.

“Illinois will only distribute a vaccine that is deemed effective,” Pritzker said, but that process could begin within days of being granted FDA emergency approval.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set priorities to distribute vaccines first to frontline health-care workers and residents in long-term-care facilities like nursing homes. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices estimates that involves 21 million health-care workers and 3 million residents.

Pritzker said the state would work “in tandem” with Chicago, which will receive its vaccines separately from the CDC. It’s estimated the state has 655,000 health-care workers, 162,000 of those in Chicago, and 109,000 long-term-care residents, 16,000 of those in the city. Illinois expects 109,000 doses to be delivered the week after FDA approval, 23,000 of those going straight to Chicago.

With both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines requiring double inoculations, however — Pfizer three weeks apart and Moderna four weeks — Pritzker said it will take “multiple weeks” to complete just that first process, considered Phase 1A. Phase 1B will address police officers, firefighters, and other so-called first responders, people 65 and older, and those with co-morbidities and other health factors putting them at higher risk.

Estimating it would take “many months” just to complete that second initial phase, Priztker said, “This will not be a quick process.”

The CDC’s ACIP is also considering prioritizing African Americans and Hispanics, who have suffered much higher death rates in the pandemic than the general population.

“This is unprecedented, like everything else in 2020,” Pritzker said of the nationwide vaccination process.

“This is unprecedented, like everything else in 2020.”

Gov. Pritzker (Illinois.gov)

But the process of vaccinating that general population is about to get underway, and Pritzker expressed an optimistic excitement, saying, “Now it’s on all of us to keep wearing our masks, keep our distance, and find the patience to allow the vaccines to be distributed so that we can put this difficult chapter in the history books.” He also made sure to cite the government support for researchers that helped produce the vaccines, with others in the pipeline to follow Pfizer and Moderna in the weeks ahead.

After the Illinois Department of Public Health reported a new one-day high of 238 deaths attributed to COVID-19 on Wednesday, Pritzker and Dr. Ngozi Ezike cheered the small progress shown over the later part of the week, both in new cases and in hospitalizations. Ezike reported 10,526 new COVID cases statewide Friday, bringing the Illinois total to 770,088, while 148 new deaths took the state toll to 12,974. There were 5,453 COVID patients in hospitals, 1,153 under intensive care and 703 on ventilators. All those figures were down slightly from recent peaks. More than 112,000 tests conducted Friday produced a seven-day positivity rate of 10.3 percent.

Ezike granted, “There are still questions that are unanswered,” such as whether pregnant women can be vaccinated. The vaccines thus far are also intended only for those 18 and older, and Ezike said that estimates are that they could produce a “significant reaction” in 10 to 15 percent of those inoculated, although she added that those effects appeared to last just 24 hours. But she also said the state had purchased 20 ultra-cold freezers to aid in distributing the Pfizer vaccine.

With Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all on the record stating that they would take the vaccine to demonstrate its safety, Pritzker said that he too would willingly show its effectiveness, but he added that, as he has made clear before, he will not jump ahead of when it’s determined he should get vaccinated in the established CDC order.