As COVID vaccines are launched, an extremely vulnerable group is overlooked: millions of cancer patients. Doctors are sounding the alarm that many state governments and the federal advisory committee tasked with prioritizing people to be vaccinated should move cancer patients to the end of the line immediately after nursing home residents and front-line medical staff. . At present, they are considered a lower priority than “essential workers”, such as firefighters, mass transport employees, and even supermarket officials.
However, cancer patients are decimated by COVID-19. New data from 360 US hospitals show that cancer patients are more at risk of catching the disease than the rest of the population. Once infected, they are almost twice as likely to need hospitalization.
Even worse, they are three times more likely to die than other patients hospitalized with COVID-19, according to new findings in the journal JAMA Oncology.
New York pulmonologist Daniel Libby explains that cancer patients are likely to become infected frequently because they tend to visit doctors’ offices. Also, “their defenses are low,” which means their immune system is weaker.
This week, the COVID Lung Cancer Consortium, a group of oncologists, is calling on federalists to re-examine priorities and pay “specific attention to this vulnerable population.”
The Cuomo government should do the same. Last week, Cuomo launched the Vaccine Equity Task Force, including immigrant lawyers, civil rights leaders, tenants’ associations, labor groups and churches, most of whom are political allies of the governor. But no cancer organization made the list.
“We are talking now about who is being vaccinated and let me be clear, there are no policies in the vaccination process,” says Cuomo. It is hard to believe, Governor, given who is part of the working group and who is missing.
In New York and most states, cancer patients are ignored. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Cancer Society have asked the federal advisory committee to make vaccination of cancer patients a top priority, but the commission’s recommendation, announced Dec. 20, gave priority to essential workers and people aged 75 and over. to be next in line. This means that most cancer patients have to wait several months.
Fred Hirsch, a renowned lung cancer specialist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is investigating whether the weakened immune systems of cancer patients will cause them to produce fewer antibodies when vaccinated.
You may need more vaccinations – three photos or even four, instead of the two photos currently prescribed for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. All the more reason to start them.
In New York, meanwhile, politically connected unions representing transit workers and supermarket employees are calling on state officials and pushing for them to be considered “essential workers.”
But cancer doctors complain that they are in the dark about who to call or when to get vaccines. The same goes for doctors who treat patients with other diseases. A Westchester woman tells me she’s worried about her husband. He is 71 years old, with type 1 diabetes and two heart stents and commutes to Gotham on Metro North. His doctors do not know when they will receive vaccines. She says, “I can’t believe the 20-year-old supermarket workers will get this before him.”
Both the Federal Immunization Committee and Cuomo support the priority of “essential workers”, as this will mean vaccinating several minorities. Cuomo claims that “black, Hispanic, Asian and low-income communities paid the highest price during COVID-19.” This is a politically convenient exaggeration.
According to the data, minorities were only slightly more affected by COVID than others. In New York State, with the exception of the Big Apple, Hispanics account for 12 percent of the population and 12 percent of deaths caused by COVID, while blacks account for 9 percent of the population and 15 percent of deaths. In New York, blacks and Hispanic minorities suffered more proportional deaths than whites, but only by a few percentage points. Asians suffered fewer deaths (7%) than their share of 14% of the population.
COVID is a killer with equal chances. It is the sacrifice of cancer patients, regardless of skin color.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.