Do health care workers from the private system need to be included in a priority

[Ivette Maria Ortiz Alcantara]

Do health care workers from the private system need to be included in a priority group to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, just as health care workers from the public system?

In April 2021, the government of a country in the Americas announced that health care workers in the private system would not be considered as a priority group to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. This contrasted with health care staff working in the public health system, who were in a priority group to get a Covid-19 vaccine. Health care workers from the private system claimed that they had to interact daily with patients that had Covid-19 and they needed to be prioritized due to the nature of their work. The fact that some health care workers were prioritised and some not caused a lot of discontent within the medical community.

The government argued it was not fair to prioritize health care staff working in the private system because they did not have the same burden of work as those working in the public system and were in a privileged situation. The government announced that health care workers from the private system had to wait to get a Covid-19 vaccine until it was their turn by age. However, statistics from the Pan American Health Organization (the World Health Organisation’s American Regional Office) reported that at that time, the Americas region had high rates of confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths in healthcare workers. In fact, the country in question is the second country with higher rates of deaths among health care workers in the region, including those working in the private system. Moreover, the WHO stated that all health care workers should be prioritised to get a Covid-19 vaccine.

Do healthcare workers deserve to be prioritized for vaccination because of the nature of their job, regardless of whether they work in the public or private system?

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