--- title: CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Committee Lays Out Distribution Rules description: "Ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources." canonical: https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-11-23T22:55:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:28:14.949Z article:section: Health og:title: These Are the CDC Vaccine Committee's 4 Key Guidelines for COVID-19 Shot Distribution og:description: 'Ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources.' og:url: https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9976dc77cf5edce4/698a14a422fb8529fde2bac1/covid-19-vaccine-guidelines.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: COVID-19-Vaccine-Guidelines og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: These Are the CDC Vaccine Committee's 4 Key Guidelines for COVID-19 Shot Distribution twitter:description: 'Ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources.' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9976dc77cf5edce4/698a14a422fb8529fde2bac1/covid-19-vaccine-guidelines.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # These Are the CDC Vaccine Committee's 4 Key Guidelines for COVID-19 Shot Distribution > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Nov 23, 2020 10:55 PM UTC  This picture taken on November 18, 2020 shows a syringe and a bottle reading "Vaccine Covid-19" next to the Moderna biotech company logo. This picture taken on November 18, 2020 shows a syringe and a bottle reading "Vaccine Covid-19" next to the Moderna biotech company logo. Joel Saget—AFP/Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Nov 23, 2020 10:55 PM UTC With three vaccine makers—Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca—now reporting that their COVID-19 shots are 90% or more effective, governments are starting to make decisions about how to distribute the first doses, which will be in limited supply. In the U.S., that initial group will include health care workers, essential workers like law enforcement personnel and first responders, adults with chronic health conditions, and adults over 65 years of age. In a report published Monday in the _Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report_ (MMWR), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) laid out four ethical principles that it says should guide how to distribute the first limited doses of any authorized vaccine to those groups. “During a pandemic, ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources,” the authors write. “Consideration of ethical values and principles has featured prominently in discussions about allocation of COVID-19 vaccines. This consideration is particularly relevant because the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted long-standing, systemic health and social inequities.” Those principles include maximizing benefits, which means focusing on people at highest risk of COVID-19, as well as people who are critical to keeping others protected and healthy, such as health care workers. Another important principle is justice, to ensure that everyone, regardless of their economic or social situation, can have access to the vaccine. Related to this is the importance of mitigating health inequities, which are especially apparent with COVID-19, since people of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds are more severely affected by the disease. Those making decisions about how to distribute any authorized vaccines, the ACIP concludes, should keep in mind ways to even out such disparities and ensure that differences in access or health outcomes are not exacerbated. Finally, the group urged transparency in explaining how prioritization decisions are made, so the public understands the data and evidence on which they were based. Such transparency could go a long way toward rebuilding the public’s trust in the scientific process behind the vaccines, which has been [eroded](https://time.com/5890216/transparency-covid-vaccine-development/) by confusing and conflicting messages in recent months. Revealing the reasons why certain decisions about allocating limited vaccine doses are made could start to increase people’s confidence in public health advice and its ability to support the health of not just individuals, but populations as well. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/"},"headline":"These Are the CDC Vaccine Committee's 4 Key Guidelines for COVID-19 Shot Distribution","datePublished":"2020-11-23T22:55:41.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T09:28:14.949Z","description":"'Ethical guidelines can help steer and support decisions around prioritization of limited resources.'","url":"https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/","keywords":["COVID-19"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9976dc77cf5edce4/698a14a422fb8529fde2bac1/covid-19-vaccine-guidelines.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9976dc77cf5edce4/698a14a422fb8529fde2bac1/covid-19-vaccine-guidelines.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"COVID-19-Vaccine-Guidelines","caption":"This picture taken on November 18, 2020 shows a syringe and a bottle reading \"Vaccine Covid-19\" next to the Moderna biotech company logo.","creditText":"Joel Saget—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5915063/cdc-covid-vaccine-distribution/","name":"These Are the CDC Vaccine Committee's 4 Key Guidelines for COVID-19 Shot Distribution"}}]}] ```