Prisoners excluded from Covid vaccine program

London — The United States and the United Kingdom have already begun rolling out national coronavirus vaccination programs to curb the spread of the virus, but health professionals and activists alike have been in prison for existing guidance. I am deeply concerned about the significant shortage of the population.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet made a decision on prisoners regarding access to the vaccine, but it is believed that imprisoned individuals may be included in the second phase of allocation.

In the UK, the Joint Vaccination and Immunization Commission states that the top priority of the Covid-19 vaccination program is to prevent death and help maintain a health and social care system. There is no specific mention of the prison.

The UK Public Health Service, which oversees the US CDC and JCVI, was unable to comment immediately when contacted by CNBC.

Both countries managed the first shot of Pfizer—BioNTech Recent out-of-test vaccines raise expectations that mass deployment of safe and effective vaccines could quickly put an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, with the ever-increasing number of deaths associated with coronavirus cases, experts question the ethics of how the government plans to distribute the first vaccine.

“We are facing a really big dilemma here,” said De Anna Hoskins, president and CEO of Just Leadership USA, a national judicial reform organization that aims to cut the US corrected population in half.

Hoskins said in a Chatham House webinar earlier this month that imprisoned individuals are “still considered inferior to humans … and do so when they start talking about access to vaccines.” Stated.

The coronavirus pandemic has made American prisons and prisons a hotspot for Covid. Contained individuals are almost four times more likely to be infected and twice as likely to die than the general population. According to a criminal justice committee investigation..

“From my point of view and the information we have, we need to consider where prisoners fit in terms of risk in relation to other high-risk groups. In the face of that, prisoners have some It will be high risk for a reason. ”Seena Fazel, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Said In a report published in The Lancet Medical Journal on December 12.

Prisoners are at increased risk of being infected with the coronavirus because of the underlying chronic condition, age, and environment, Fazel said. He cited a systematic review of prison settings conducted by his team, identified correctional facilities as high-risk settings for infectious diseases, and faced considerable challenges in managing outbreaks.

“Our study suggests that people in prison should be one of the first groups to receive the COVID-19 vaccine to prevent infection and further spread of the disease,” he said. Told.

The CDC recommends early vaccination of people at high risk of coronavirus infection and death, but federal officials say corrective staff should receive priority access to the vaccine. However, we have not yet recommended that prisoners receive the same quota.

Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics, New York University School of Grossman Medicine, Said In a report issued by Lancet, he disagrees with plans to vaccinate only prison personnel.

“If they are at risk and are old or ill, they need to be vaccinated. If they are in a state of quarantine, they need to be vaccinated. Reasons to distinguish there is no.”

Mass imprisonment in the United States Does not affect all communities equally, African-Americans are disproportionately imprisoned in correctional facilities in the United States.

In addition to racial disparities within the US criminal justice system, Updated report by CDC Earlier this month, age adjustments found that Hispanic and black Americans died almost three times as often as white Americans as a result of the coronavirus.

“500,000 people have never been convicted of crime, but we have deprived them of their freedom,” said the founder and chief executive of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving security. Responsible Celia Ouellette said. The entire system of criminal justice and imprisonment. Her comment referred to Americans who were not convicted of the crime but were held in prison.

“Therefore, there is a moral obligation to treat these people the same as the surrounding community, or it may be better because they do not have access to the same options as the surrounding community.”

“We need to stop thinking of the prisoner population as a category of people and start thinking of them as people, just like prisons and communities around prisons,” Ouellette said in the same Chatham House webinar. I did.