Tag: public health

Person smoking cigarette.

Should Smokers be Prioritized for COVID Vaccine?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on February 2, 2021. 

By Jeff Neal

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? In a Zoom interview with Harvard Law Today, public health expert Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10 says the answer is yes. 

CDC guidelines, which most states are following as they launch mass vaccination programs, say people with certain underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk for hospitalization or death if they contract COVID-19 (also known as co-morbidities) should receive access to the vaccine before the general population. In Massachusetts, these individuals will be eligible to receive the vaccine in Group 4 of Phase 2 of the state’s vaccination rollout plan. But many have been surprised to see smoking listed among the qualifying conditions, alongside cancer and heart disease.

Shachar, the executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, says that smoking is often the result of structural and biological factors that make it more prevalent in historically marginalized communities, and that denying priority access for smokers would reinforce existing inequities. More practically, she says, “every time a person gets vaccinated, it’s good for the community.” 

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Madison, Wisconsin / USA - April 24th, 2020: Nurses at Reopen Wisconsin Protesting against the protesters protesting safer at home order rally holding signs telling people to go home.

The Consequences of Public Health Law Vacuums

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By Daniel Goldberg

Pandemic planning documents and materials from the early 2000s to the present anticipated a great deal of what the U.S. has been experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The best of such plans documented exactly what be required to manage, respond, and control a pandemic spread by a highly communicable respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2.

What the plans did not account for was what we are now experiencing: That governments would simply refuse to govern.

Few truly accounted for the possibility that the very entities charged with regulating for the health, safety, and welfare of their residents and citizens would simply decline to do so, choosing instead the public health law vacuums in which we find ourselves at the present time. Read More

Syringe being filled from a vial. Vaccine concept illustration.

Is Israel Trading Medical Information for Vaccines? Ethical and Legal Considerations

Shelly Simana Leave a comment

By Shelly Simana

On January 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that millions of vaccines are expected to arrive in Israel, and that by March, anyone who wishes to get vaccinated will be able to do so.

He concluded his speech with a controversial statement: “as part of the agreement [with Pfizer], we stipulated that Israel will serve as a global model state for a rapid vaccine rollout of an entire country… Israel will share with Pfizer, with all of humanity, the statistics that will help in developing strategies to defeat the coronavirus” (my translation, from Hebrew).

But which statistics, what kind of data, will be shared with Pfizer? This question remains a mystery.

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COVID-19 fake news concept illustration.

COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation and the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Dorit Reiss 18 Comments

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

The anti-vaccine movement is aggressively working to promote misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, up to and including promoting fake claims of deaths from vaccines. We need to be aware of its efforts, and be prepared to respond.

It’s worth emphasizing that this blog post is focused on the anti-vaccine movement, not people with concerns about vaccines (the “vaccine hesitant”).

In relation to COVID-19, anti-vaccine activists have aggressively promoted misinformation from the start of the pandemic.

In March 2020, anti-vaccine activists incorrectly alleged – by misrepresenting a study – that flu vaccines increase COVID-19 risks. In June, anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree described COVID-19 as a “cold,” blamed those who died for their own deaths, and called on his followers to “catch that cold.”

And from the beginning, anti-vaccine activists were committed to the ideas that COVID-19 vaccines would not work, would be dangerous, and would be promoted by a nefarious global conspiracy. They continue to spread these allegations, for example, using the fact that there are liability protections for COVID-19 vaccines to imply the vaccines are dangerous. Liability protections for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are real; but they are not evidence that the vaccines are unsafe.

This post will focus on one type of misinformation: alleged deaths from COVID-19 vaccines.

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Vial and syringe.

What to Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine Dosing Debate

Dorit Reiss 1 Comment

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

Faced with limited COVID-19 vaccine doses and the ever-mounting toll and strain of the pandemic, a new debate has emerged as to the best strategy for allocating the vaccines.

Both COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., which are produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, have been studied under two-dose clinical trials. The two-dose regime is thought to accord a more robust immune response against COVID-19.

In the U.K., however, due to concerns about the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, the government has deviated from established protocols. First, it decided to delay (but not omit) the administration of the second dose of the available vaccines, in order to increase the number of people getting at least one dose; second, it decided to allow mixing and matching of doses across vaccine types.

The United States is considering following the U.K. and moving to give more first doses, at the cost of delaying completion of the series.

Experts are sharply divided on whether that is a good or bad idea.

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Vial and syringe.

Congress Should Enact No-Fault Compensation for COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries

Dorit Reiss 1 Comment

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

If COVID-19 vaccines lead to any serious harms, society should compensate those victims generously and quickly.

Currently, under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers and providers are immune from liability.

Anyone seeking compensation for a severe side effect from a COVID-19 vaccine needs to go through a government program that is extremely narrow and hard to win; the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). The program requires “compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence” to be compensated — a very high bar. It has compensated only a very small percentage of claims submitted over the years.

But we have an alternative. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) provides compensation under a much more generous standard. It has been used for years for childhood vaccines, and has served us well. While not perfect, it offers a decent path forward.

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Person receiving vaccine.

What You Should Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on December 3, 2020. 

By Jeff Neal

The race to approve and distribute a vaccine for COVID-19 got a huge shot in the arm this week.

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom approved a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. On the same day in the United States, a panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a first-stage plan for distributing the vaccine to some of the most at-risk Americans. Separately, another advisory committee is set to meet twice in the coming weeks to evaluate for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the safety and efficacy of both the Pfizer vaccine and a similar one produced by Moderna.

To better understand the impact of these developments, Harvard Law Today recently spoke with public health expert Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10, the executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, about the vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether employers and states can require people to get vaccinated.

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This 2006 image depicted a nurse, who was administering an intramuscular vaccination into a middle-aged man’s left shoulder muscle. The nurse was using her left hand to stabilize the injection site.

An Equity-Based Strategy for COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

Megan Shen Leave a comment

By Megan J. Shen

How COVID-19 vaccines roll out in the U.S. will highlight the nation’s priorities, and potentially also its persistent disparities.

Top of the list to receive the vaccine are frontline healthcare workers, who were the first to receive Pfizer’s new vaccine this week.

Next will come long-term care facility residents and workers. This is critical, as long-term care residents have suffered perhaps the most devastating death toll, killing over 100,000 residents.

But there is still a long winter ahead where many will not yet have access to the vaccine. And it remains unclear how the next round of vaccine recipients will be allocated to serve the most vulnerable populations.

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Vial and syringe.

Challenges in COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: Lessons from the UK

Sravya Chary Leave a comment

By Sravya Chary

Just over a week after the United Kingdom became the first Western country to authorize the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for emergency use, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) followed suit on December 11, 2020.

This lag may prove beneficial. The United States can and should cautiously assess the United Kingdom’s vaccination strategy to avoid challenges that may impede its ability to control the virus.

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