Give Covid vaccine to the young first

Who should be at the front of the line if an effective Covid-19 vaccine emerges from testing? The answer depends on what we learn from the kind of field trials Russia is skipping.
Some vaccines might not be that good at preventing infection, but would prevent severe cases. Those should be given to those most likely to die from the disease — older people or those with conditions associated with death from Covid-19.
But if a vaccine actually prevents transmission, then priority should go to those who transmit the disease most often: younger adults. Getting protected with a vaccine is a way of protecting others, since you can’t give anyone the disease if you never get it.
And starting with younger people could be the fastest route to herd immunity — that phenomenon by which the virus is slowed by a lack of susceptible hosts.
Why give the vaccine to the people most likely to spread the disease rather than to the people most likely to die from it? Virologist David Sanders of Purdue explains that it’s likely that Covid-19 vaccines it won’t work as well in people with poorly functioning immune systems — those most vulnerable to the disease. That’s often the case with flu shots and other vaccines. But those people can still be
protected if enough healthy
people get vaccinated to drive infections way down.
“Immunisation is not about protecting the individual — it’s about protecting society,” he says.
But here’s the rub: If young, healthy people unlikely to die from the disease are being asked to step up and get vaccinated, the odds of any serious side effects have to be extremely low. And that’s why field testing is so important.
Skipping that kind of extensive field testing, as Russia is doing, could foil our chance to end the pandemic. Infectious disease specialist Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says the early phases of the FDA’s required testing offer limited information.

—Bloomberg