EXPERTS SEE PROGRESS ON A COVID VACCINE, BUT WORRY ABOUT WHO GETS IT FIRST AND HOW IT GETS TO THEM   1500w

USA TODAY logo Experts see progress on a COVID vaccine, but worry about who gets it first and how it gets to them

A coronavirus vaccine or even several could be ready in just a few months, so experts are beginning to worry about how to get it into people's arms.

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“Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations save lives,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

USA TODAY's expert panelists, increasingly optimistic about the prospect of a readily available vaccine, are concerned about who will get it first, how doses will be shipped, and what messages the government must send so Americans trust getting one.

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As the tantalizing prospect of an immunization for COVID-19 comes into focus, educating the public about how the vaccines will work and the painstaking process required to approve them will be key to getting people to line up once they’re available.

It will take “messaging the integrity of the research system,” said Sam Halabi, a law professor at the University of Missouri and expert on global health law.

If this doesn’t happen now, the more than $10 billion in tax dollars spent on vaccines will have been wasted because not enough people will get them to matter.

The agencies that decide if a vaccine is ready and who gets it first – the Food and Drug Administration