OLIVE BRANCH, Miss. (AP) – Workers began packing supplies for the second US-authorized COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, a desperate boost to efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.
Employees at a factory in the Memphis area were vaccinating the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and National Institutes of Health. The much-needed photos are expected to be taken starting Monday, just three days away after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency release.
Later on Sunday, a panel of experts will debate who should be next in line for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and a similar one from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech from Germany. Pfizer’s images were sent for the first time a week ago and started being used the next day, starting the nation’s largest vaccination action.
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 314,000 in the United States and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.
The Pfizer and Moderna images sent so far, which will be released in the next few weeks, are almost all intended for health workers and long-term care home residents, based on the opinion of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
That panel meets on Sunday to debate who should get the doses available after taking those early photos.
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.
Panel members lean to put the “essential workers” in line, because people like bus drivers, grocery store officials, and others are the ones who get 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. No matter what the CDC says, there will be differences from state to state because their health departments have different ideas about who should be closer to the front line.
Both the new 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.