The hot spots are also places recent immigrants come to live, and many don’t have any connection to the health care system. They may be reluctant to seek testing or medical help because of their immigration status, he says.
Dousing the flames in these hot spots will prevent them spreading elsewhere. “You can get multiple benefits out of this,” he says. It’s the right thing to do from an epidemic control standpoint. And it could bring some relief to communities that have not had good access to health care through the pandemic.
Sending vaccines to hot spots is also the fair thing to do, since many people in places with high rates of disease live in crowded housing and do high-risk jobs, often not by choice. Many are members of minority groups who have been disproportionately hurt by the virus and its economic fallout.
Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, says it’s important to separate problems with vaccine allocation plans from what happens in reality. The CDC and the National Academy of Sciences have created thoughtful plans that give the most vulnerable people priority, she says, but inadequate funding has made it hard to carry out those plans. And some states are creating plans on their own.
With poor funding for distributing vaccines, she says, it’s been cheaper to send doses to big hospitals, even though that’s led to hospital administrative staff getting the shots before many people who are more at risk.
