Should Millennials and Gen Z Get the Vaccine First?
There's a case to be made for vaccinating those with the most daily interactions early.
Who’s next?
Photographer: Cesar Manso/AFP
If the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine gains regulatory approval by Christmas, we can cheer the scientists for heroic work. But it will be the distribution decisions made by governments that will determine how quickly we can all exit Covid confinement. The U.K. has put itself in a strong position to access early vaccines, but its approach to prioritization and distribution needs careful thought.
The U.K.’s National Vaccine Taskforce spread its bets early on, putting in orders for 340 million vaccine doses among six different vaccine candidates. Pfizer’s vaccine is one of them and Britain should be an early beneficiary, receiving a total of 40 million doses of the vaccine and possibly a portion of that before Christmas. Given the double-dose requirement for efficacy, that means 20 million Britons can be vaccinated.