"It will allow the public to know it's transparent, it's not political," said Dr. Victor Dzau, the academy's president who told Collins that his organization was up to the task. "The American public will want to know how are you making that decision? Why am I not getting it first?"
After months of missteps and criticism across the political spectrum on everything from testing to personal protective equipment, the Trump administration is aiming to prove it can roll out a coronavirus vaccine quickly and fairly to millions of Americans as soon as one is ready. That means tackling thorny challenges like deciding who is first in line for vaccination, securing millions of glass vials and syringes and convincing Americans to get inoculated.
The administration is making moves that experts applaud like tapping top health officials and industry experts to lead vaccine plans rather than politicians, but they are still concerned that the overall effort -- dubbed Operation Warp Speed -- remains shrouded in secrecy. And the administration's response to the rest of the pandemic has not inspired confidence.
"It's sort of being handled like a secret weapon, which is never good," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Transparency is always good."
First in line
Once a vaccine is approved, every American won't be able to get it at once. That sets up the unenviable task of deciding, amid a deadly pandemic, who is most vulnerable to the disease and who is most essential to inoculate quickly.
"People are a little uneasy about the government calling the shots here," NIH's Dr. Collins told a Senate panel earlier this month.
Experts will have to consider vulnerable populations like those in assisted-living facilities or prisons, people working in close quarters like meat packing plants and how to assess Americans with preexisting conditions.
The National Academy of Medicine hopes to have its recommendations publicly available in August or September.
A second panel of vaccine advisers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) -- is also coming up with a set of guidelines. It's still unclear whether the administration will select one set of recommendations over the other or take both into account when making its final decisions.
Last month, the ACIP convened electronically in a little-noticed meeting to discuss who counts as an essential worker, where teachers should fall in the priority list, vaccinations for pregnant women and whether race and ethnicity should factor into priority considerations.
"If we fail to address this issue of racial and ethnic groups as a high risk in prioritization, whatever comes out of our group will be looked at very suspiciously and with a lot of reservation," Dr. José Romero, the panel's chairman, said.
The meeting encapsulated the steps the government is already taking to prepare for a vaccine, as wel
