While COVID vaccines are being launched, an extremely vulnerable group is being overlooked: millions of cancer patients. Doctors are warning that many state governments and the federal advisory committee charged with prioritizing who is vaccinated must move cancer patients to the front of the line, right after nursing home residents and frontline health professionals. At the moment, they are considered a lower priority than “essential workers”, such as firefighters, public transport workers and possibly even supermarket clerks.
However, cancer patients are being wiped out by COVID-19. New data from 360 American hospitals show that cancer patients are more at risk of contracting the disease than the rest of the population. Once infected, they are almost twice as likely to require hospitalization.
Worse, they are three times more likely to die than other hospitalized COVID-19 patients, according to new findings from the journal JAMA Oncology.
New York pulmonologist Daniel Libby explains that cancer patients are likely to be infected frequently because they tend to visit doctors’ offices. In addition, their “defenses are low”, which means that their immune systems are weaker.
This week, the COVID Lung Cancer Consortium, a group of oncologists, is asking the feds to reexamine priorities and pay “specific attention to this vulnerable population”.
Governor Cuomo must do the same. Last week, Cuomo launched the “Vaccine Equality Task Force”, including immigrant advocates, civil rights leaders, tenant associations, labor groups and churches, most of whom are political governors of the governor. But no cancer organization made the list.
“Now we are talking about who is going to be vaccinated and, let me be clear, there is no policy in the vaccination process,” says Cuomo. It is hard to believe, Governor, considering who is on the task force and who is missing.
In New York and most states, cancer patients are being ignored. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Cancer Society urged the federal advisory committee to make vaccination of cancer patients a priority, but the committee’s recommendation, announced on December 20, prioritized essential workers and people aged 75 and over as the next in line. This means that most cancer patients need to wait more months.
Fred Hirsch, a renowned lung cancer specialist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, is investigating whether weakening the immune system of cancer patients will cause them to produce less antibodies when vaccinated.
They may need more vaccines – three or even four, instead of the two injections currently prescribed for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. One more reason to start.
Meanwhile, in New York, politically connected unions representing transit workers and supermarket workers are calling state officials and pushing to be considered “essential workers”.
But cancer doctors complain that they don’t know who to call or when to get the vaccines. The same goes for doctors who treat patients with other illnesses. A woman from Westchester told me that she is concerned about her husband. He is 71, has type one diabetes and two cardiac stents, and travels to Gotham on Metro North. Your doctors do not know when they will receive the vaccines. She says: “I can’t believe that 20-year-old supermarket workers will make it before him.”
Both the federal vaccine committee and Cuomo advocate prioritizing “essential workers,” because that will mean vaccinating more minorities. Cuomo says that “black, Hispanic, Asian and low-income communities paid the highest price during COVID-19”. This is a politically convenient exaggeration.
Minorities were only slightly more affected by COVID than others, according to the data. In New York state, excluding the Big Apple, Hispanics make up 12% of the population and 12% of COVID’s deaths, while blacks make up 9% of the population and 15% of deaths. In New York City, blacks and Hispanic minorities suffered more fatalities proportionally than whites, but only in a few percentage points. Asians had fewer deaths (7 percent) than their 14 percent share of the population.
COVID is an equal opportunity killer. It is to slaughter cancer patients, no matter the color of their skin.
Betsy McCaughey is a former New York vice governor.