CLEVELAND — When the new vaccine comes out for COVID-19, you will likely have to wait.
So who will go first?
On Thursday, The New York Times provided a glimpse with one of the easiest questionnaires you may ever take.
Find it here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/03/opinion/covid-19-vaccine-timeline.html.
Just enter your age, county, profession, and coronavirus risk profile, and see just how many people could get the vaccine ahead you.
“For the first period of time, there’s probably going to be quite a shortage,” said Stuart Thompson, who crafted the story.
Still, the new tool gives an important perspective.
“You recognize your place in line a little bit and kind of understand the scope of the number of people who are really at risk if you are later in line,” Thompson said.
We could not resist testing it on those we know.
For example, reporter Andrew Horansky was 10-millionth in line in Ohio.
Brett Hiner, an English teacher in Wooster, was 5.3 millionth.
Carole Horansky, Andrew’s 96-year-old grandmother, is healthy and lives in North Olmsted. She was 4.8 millionth.
“They probably don’t want to waste the vaccine on the old lady,” she joked.
“Maybe it’s because so many teachers are remote that we’re not in front of the students a lot of the time, so maybe that’s one reason,” Brett Hiner said about his higher number.
So, who is at the top?
The tool found Horansky’s wife, a pediatrician, is among the state’s 723,000 healthcare workers who would be among the first to receive the vaccine.
Dr. Rebecca Weintraub is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery at Ariadne Labs. She worked with the Surgo Foundation to build the tool.
“Health care workers and critical risk workers actually move up to the front of the line because they’re not only at risk of being infected, they’re also at risk of transmitting,” she said, pointing out that location matters too.
“If you’re in a state with a lot of healthcare workers, you may be further down the line than if you’re in a state with fewer healthcare workers,” Dr. Weintraub said.
You may also not want to bother entering the ages of your kids, either, since clinical trials are underway in kids ages 12-18 and a vaccine for them will not be available in the first wave.
Also note, though the tool may reveal your spot in line, it cannot predict the length of your wait for the vaccine.
More coverage:
- $1,500 stimulus check proposed to get Americans to take the coronavirus vaccine
- Getting the COVID-19 vaccine? You'll get a vaccination card, too
- Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to announce COVID-19 vaccine protocols Friday
- COVID-19 'game changer' | Georgia State researchers say new drug can help suppress transmission
Editor's Note: The below video was part of Gov. Mike DeWine's COVID-19 briefing on December 3, 2020