It’s been a good week for COVID-19 vaccine news with Moderna and Pfizer announcing positive results from phase 3 clinical trials—but when they’re approved, who will get them first? A coalition of stakeholders (including BIO) is urging Health and Human Services (HHS) to prioritize the communities hit hardest by the virus in the allocation of all COVID-19 vaccines, therapies, and resources.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep and systemic inequities in our health care system,”says a coalition of health stakeholders and advocacy organizations in the letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
“Not only are members of minority and under-served communities more likely to suffer serious health consequences from SARS-CoV-2 infections, they disproportionately suffer economic hardships related to the pandemic,” continues the letter. (USA TODAY recently dug into this in more detail.)
“Given the disparate impact of COVID-19 on minority and underserved communities, we strongly believe that distributing resources without recognizing these realities risks exacerbating barriers to accessing COVID-19 treatments.” These resources include vaccines, medicines, reagents, PPE, and funding.
The letter provides specific recommendations: explicitly setting promotion of health equity as a priority, establishing “evidence-based criteria that direct product to areas experiencing a disproportionate burden of disease or other resource constraint,” and ensuring clear communication.
BIO signed the letter because health equity is one of our priorities. We recently launched the BIOEquality Agenda to help ensure marginalized communities have access to science—including COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.
Learn more about the BIOEquality Agenda.
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