Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three d
Speaker 1: and twenty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story. Healthcare workers were among the first priority
Speaker 1: for vaccinations in the US, but thousands of doctors, nurses,
Speaker 1: and other health professionals say that if they're not affiliated
Speaker 1: with major hospitals, they're likely to miss out. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in virus News Today. New York City
Speaker 1: broke down its COVID nineteen vaccination data by ethnicity for
Speaker 1: the first time that revealed profound racial disparities in who's
Speaker 1: getting the shots. White residents made up almost half of
Speaker 1: the people who have received at least one dose, despite
Speaker 1: consisting of only a third of the population. Latinos of
Speaker 1: the city only accounted for fifteen percent of those vaccinated.
Speaker 1: The lowest ratio was among Black residents. Even though they
Speaker 1: make up almost a quarter of the city's population, they
Speaker 1: only accounted for eleven percent of those vaccinated. The percentage
Speaker 1: of Asians among all vaccinated residents was similar to their
Speaker 1: representation in the city. A top health advisor to President
Speaker 1: Joe Biden warned Sunday that the highly transmissible UK variant
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus will likely become the dominant strain in
Speaker 1: the US. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious
Speaker 1: Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said
Speaker 1: on nb CS Meet the Press that the nation's health
Speaker 1: care system must pair for a surge in serious cases,
Speaker 1: such as the one experienced recently in England. Finally, the
Speaker 1: US added about a hundred and forty four thousand COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen cases on Saturday, fewer than the average of over
Speaker 1: the preceding seven days. The data compiled by Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: University and Bloomberg are further evidence the pandemic is slowing
Speaker 1: in the US and now for today's main story. Since
Speaker 1: fiser and MODERNA vaccine shipments in the US began in
Speaker 1: mid December, the priority has been doctors, nurses, and other
Speaker 1: professionals likely to come in contact with the novel coronavirus,
Speaker 1: but healthcare workers who aren't with hospitals and major health
Speaker 1: systems say they're being overlooked. I spoke to reporter a
Speaker 1: Lease Young about why thousands of healthcare workers are still
Speaker 1: seeking vaccinations even as states and cities open eligibility two
Speaker 1: people far removed from the pandemics frontline. Throughout the U S.
Speaker 1: Shipments of say the Fiser and MODERNA vaccine have been
Speaker 1: distributed to doctors, nurses, other health professionals, but there is
Speaker 1: a significant population of medical workers who are not having
Speaker 1: an easy time accessing vaccines. Can you tell us a
Speaker 1: bit about this. The priority has been from the beginning
Speaker 1: to vaccinate healthcare workers, but states made those healthcare workers
Speaker 1: those who are affiliated with hospitals, and the reason for
Speaker 1: that largely is because hospitals had the ability to store
Speaker 1: some of the vaccines, which of course require super cold
Speaker 1: temperatures um and then it was kind of an afterthought,
Speaker 1: oh what do we do about these folks who aren't
Speaker 1: hospital employees. So we've seen in recent weeks that many
Speaker 1: U S states have begun to expand eligibility for vaccines.
Speaker 1: But how has that been impacting these professional health workers
Speaker 1: who aren't affiliated with, for example, large scale health systems
Speaker 1: or hospitals. The US has added tremendous numbers of people
Speaker 1: who are not healthcare workers. In some states, such as Florida,
Speaker 1: they said, if you are over sixty five, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether you have any medical conditions come on in if
Speaker 1: in some states have have said, you know, tax collectors
Speaker 1: should should get the vaccine, forest rangers should get the vaccine.
Speaker 1: The vaccine was scarce enough before you added these folks,
Speaker 1: and now you've got them competing with the front line
Speaker 1: workers who are actually at great risk of being exposed
Speaker 1: to the virus. Now, as you mentioned, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of for example, general practitioners or family doctors. These
Speaker 1: are people who do not work often in hospital settings,
Speaker 1: but are still very much frontline workers. What kind of
Speaker 1: data do we have about how this group of medical
Speaker 1: professionals has been affected thus far by COVID nineteen there
Speaker 1: was a study done by the University at Pennsylvania's Medical
Speaker 1: School about six months ago that found that healthcare workers
Speaker 1: um made up a significant portion of folks who are
Speaker 1: dying of COVID, and among those, twenty seven percent of
Speaker 1: about a thousand physician deaths were primary doctors and others
Speaker 1: who don't work in hospitals. The study said that the
Speaker 1: hospital workers had a lot of access to protective personal
Speaker 1: protective equipment that folks working in independent offices might not have.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you could just maybe give
Speaker 1: us a bit of color um some anecdotes perhaps about
Speaker 1: what some of these, in many cases unaffiliated medical professionals
Speaker 1: have had to do and to try and get themselves vaccinated.
Speaker 1: We spoke to a doctor in Florida, a pediatrician, who
Speaker 1: said it took him about a month after the vaccinations
Speaker 1: first became available for himself to schedule an appointment, and
Speaker 1: as of yesterday, his physicians assistant, who he says sees
Speaker 1: more sick children than he does, has not been able
Speaker 1: to get his first shot. I also spoke to a
Speaker 1: dentist on Long Island who got his first and his
Speaker 1: next doses due on Wednesday, and he still doesn't have
Speaker 1: a second appointment. One of his office workers was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to score an appointment at a megacite on Long Island,
Speaker 1: UH and was all set to go, and then the
Speaker 1: megacites sent out a notice saying, sorry, we're open, just
Speaker 1: two employees. We made a mistake, so she had to cancel.
Speaker 1: And and let's look at this from the distribution angle.
Speaker 1: You know, what efforts have been made now that we
Speaker 1: know that there are these these issues with many medical
Speaker 1: professionals having trouble getting access to vaccines, what efforts have
Speaker 1: been made to try and help these this population get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: In Pennsylvania, the health chief ordered hospitals to set aside
Speaker 1: ten percent of their vaccine doses for non affiliated staff.
Speaker 1: Haven't been able to determine yet how successful that's been,
Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania is the only state that I was able
Speaker 1: to find that has done that. We have heard reports
Speaker 1: that some medical professionals are are hesitant about receiving the vaccine.
Speaker 1: But but this is a slightly different issue in that
Speaker 1: these professionals are are wanting to be vaccinated but are
Speaker 1: unable to do so. Can you can you tell us
Speaker 1: a bit about that. In New Jersey, we got reports
Speaker 1: around Christmas time that hospital staff we're not eager to
Speaker 1: get the vaccine because they did not want to feel
Speaker 1: any side effects around the holidays. And then we have
Speaker 1: found that sentiment around the US. UH, some health professionals
Speaker 1: have said, we don't we don't really want to be
Speaker 1: the guinea pig here, so we will wait to see
Speaker 1: what kind of effects there are. But my colleagues spoke
Speaker 1: to a an executive medical director at Oak Street Health
Speaker 1: in the Chicago area YEA, and he said that there's
Speaker 1: really broad exceptions from the traveling nurses and nurse practitioners
Speaker 1: and infusion specialists. They're saying, outright, how can I get vaccinated? Um?
Speaker 1: And there's also some concern that these folks could be
Speaker 1: at greater risk because if you're working in a hospital setting,
Speaker 1: you're working among people who have been vaccinated largely, and
Speaker 1: patients have been tested, and folks coming in for for
Speaker 1: elective surgery have been screened before they come in. When
Speaker 1: you're a primary care doctor, somebody makes an appointment and
Speaker 1: comes into your office, you can ask them some questions,
Speaker 1: but you're probably not going to spot test them right there.
Speaker 1: That was at least young and that's it for our
Speaker 1: show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus
Speaker 1: around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and
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Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Magnus
Speaker 1: Heentrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported
Speaker 1: by Elise Young. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors
Speaker 1: are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.