Initial deliveries of the second COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the United States left a distribution center on Sunday, a desperate boost as the nation works to control the coronavirus pandemic.
The trucks left the Olive Branch, Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennessee, with the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. mRNA,
and National Institutes of Health. The much-needed photos are expected to be released on Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency release.
In Louisville, Kentucky, UPS driver Todd Elble said his vaccine transportation was “the heaviest cargo I’ve ever carried” in a 37-year career. His parents contracted COVID-19 in November, and his 78-year-old father died. He said the family speculates that his father became infected while traveling on a hunting trip with four other relatives in Wyoming, and some are still ill.
“I will take the vaccine myself. I will be the first in line for my father – I tell you so much – and for anyone else who should follow, “he said. “I feel in my heart that everyone should, to help stop this.”
He added: “To bring this back, I feel like Dad was in the truck with me today.”
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the federal government’s chief scientific adviser on the vaccine’s distribution effort, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that nearly 8 million doses, about 5.9 million of the Moderna vaccine and 2 million will be distributed on Monday. from the Pfizer Inc. vaccine. FE,
He said the first Modern photos should be taken Monday morning.
Also on Sunday, a committee of experts began to consider who should be next for the early doses of the Moderna vaccine and the one from Pfizer and BioNTech BNTX in Germany,
Pfizer’s images were first shipped a week ago and began to be used the next day, starting with the nation’s largest vaccination unit.
Public health experts say the shootings – and others in progress – are the only way to stop a virus that has spread wildly. Nationwide, more than 219,000 people a day are tested positive for the virus, which has killed more than 316,000 in the United States and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.
Slaoui also predicted that the United States would experience “continued growth,” with as many coronavirus cases as possible from Christmas gatherings.
“Unfortunately, I think it will get worse,” he said.
The Pfizer and Moderna images delivered so far and in the next few weeks are almost all intended for healthcare workers and long-term care home residents, based on the opinion of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
There will not be enough photos for the general population until spring, so the doses will be rationed at least for the next few months. President-elect Joe Biden pledged earlier this month to deliver 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office, and his candidate general surgeon said on Sunday that it was still a realistic goal.
But Vivek Murthy, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said it was more realistic to believe it might be summer or early fall before coronavirus vaccines became available to the general population rather than late spring. Murthy said Biden’s team is working to make the photos available to low-risk people by the end of spring, but to do that, “everything has to go exactly on schedule.”
“I think it’s more realistic to assume that it could be closer to mid-summer or early fall when this vaccine makes its way to the general population,” Murthy said. “So we want to be optimistic, but we also want to be cautious.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s chief surgeon, Jerome Adams, defended the administration of the Pfizer vaccine on Sunday, a day after the army’s general accusation of receiving COVID-19 vaccines in the US apologized on Saturday for “miscommunication” with states on the number of doses to be administered. delivered in the early stages of distribution. At least a dozen states have reported receiving a second, smaller shipment of Pfizer vaccines than previously told.
Gender. Gustave Perna told reporters in a telephone briefing that he made mistakes by quoting a number of doses that he thought would be ready. Slaoui said the mistake was that the vaccines produced were ready for transport when there was a two-day delay.
“And if it’s not perfectly correct, we won’t release doses of vaccine for use,” he said. “And sometimes there may be little hiccups. In fact, there were none in production now. The hiccup was more in the planning. “
But Adams, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said that “the numbers will go up and down.”
“It was absolutely not poor planning,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. There is what we actually allocate. There is what is delivered, and then there is what is actually put in people’s arms. “
Adams, who is black, said he understands that distrust of the medical community and the black vaccine “comes from a real place,” mistreatment of black communities. He cited the decades-old Tuskegee experiment in Alabama, where black men with syphilis were not treated so the disease could be studied.
He also said that illegal immigrants from the US should not be denied the vaccine because of their legal status, because “it is not ethically fair to refuse those people.”
“I want to assure people that your information when collected to obtain the second photo, if you receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, will not be used in any way, form or form to legally harm you,” he said. said Adams. “That’s what I was assured of.”
Expert panel members are inclined to put “essential workers” in line, as people like bus drivers, grocery store officials and others become infected most often. But other experts say people 65 and older should be next, along with people with certain medical conditions, because they are the Americans who die at the highest rates.
The advice of the expert group is almost always approved by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Regardless of what the CDC says, there will be differences from state to state because different health departments have different ideas about who should be closer to the front line.
Both the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine require two doses a few weeks apart. The second dose should be from the same company as the first. Both vaccines have appeared safely and strongly protected in large, as yet unfinished studies.