ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT
Portable Sanitation Association International News
BIWEEKLY EDITION JANUARY 20, 2021
Page 21
The Latest: What You Need to Know about
the COVID-19 Vaccine
By Karleen Kos, PSAI's Executive Director
Continued on page 22
B
y now, you know there's a vaccine for COVID-19.
Defying all usual timelines and against challenging
odds, less than a year after the novel coronavirus began
infecting people around the world, a preventative injection
has been developed and is now being distributed. Here's
what you need to know as that process unfolds.
It's All Local
As of this writing, there is no comprehensive national
distribution plan for the vaccine. Although the Biden
administration has indicated that such a plan will be coming in the near future, the approach to date has been for
the federal government to allocate doses to various jurisdictions and let the locals figure out how to distribute it.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued recommendations for distribution but that's all they are. They
are not binding, so who gets a vaccine at what date can be very different across the country.
Allocation of vaccine to a specific area varies based
on several factors. For example, in states like Illinois
and New York, the largest cities receive separate
allocations from those intended for outstate use.
Indian Health Services get their own allocations.
Certain other entities do too (see the Operation
Warp Speed graphic on page 19). Governors and
public health officials decide how the rest of the
vaccine reaches people's arms. Everything from
geography to expediency to politics is affecting how
that works across the country.
Everybody is also constrained by issues related
to manufacturing—the supply has not been
predictable, so nobody really knows how many
doses they are getting and when they are getting
them. Transportation and storage of the vaccine presents major challenges, because very cold temperatures must
be maintained. This limits the places and ways vaccines can be administered. For more information on these
challenges, members can check out the recording of the PSAI's January 7 Virtual Roundtable.
Vaccines for Portable Sanitation Workers
Although local groups do not have to follow it, the CDC's framework and ethical principles are generally being
used as the backdrop for local distribution decisions. Currently we believe portable sanitation workers will
generally fall into CDC's distribution category 1-c which is where essential workers in transportation and logistics,
water and wastewater, construction, and related fields are specifically named.
While many folks are eager to move to the head of the vaccine line, we do not believe that portable sanitation
companies will commonly be able to make a convincing case that our employees' exposure is greater than those
of the other groups in this tier. There are always exceptions; companies that serve certain types of special sites
may be able to argue that their employees are subject to greater exposure than most.
January 15, 2021 vaccination map courtesy of The New York Times.
