Newsman: Monday will be the lucky day for the Americans in general. the first ever corona virus vaccine will be administrated on this day as expected as preparation are made. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield has accepted an advisory committee’s recommendation on Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine can now be administered in the United States and may be given to people ages 16 and older. The CDC vaccine advisory committee recommended that health care workers and long-term care facility residents be first in line to receive the shot.
Dr. Redfield accepted the ACIP recommendation on Saturday night, he said in a statement. “As Covid-19 cases continue to surge throughout the US, CDC’s recommendation comes at a critical time. Initial Covid-19 vaccination is set to start as early as Monday, and this is the next step in our efforts to protect Americans, reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and help restore some normalcy to our lives and our country,” he said in a statement.
The decision comes the same day that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted on Saturday to recommend the use of vaccine for at least 16 years and older Americans.
Meanwhile Pfizer has already begun shipping its vaccine on Sunday, with first shots in arms expected Monday morning. The first batch of vaccines was loaded onto trucks at a Pfizer plant in Portage, Michigan, and shipped out across the country on Sunday morning. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will arrive to about 636 sites across the US in the coming days. FedEx and UPS freight trucks carrying about 184,275 vials of vaccine already has departed the plant, and the combined 189 boxes of vaccine vials are expected to arrive in all 50 states on Monday, according to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine distribution management authority.
Another 3,900 vials are expected to ship later Sunday to United States territories, and 400 boxes packed with about 390,000 vials will ship Monday to arrive on Tuesday. There are five doses of vaccine per vial, according to Pfizer.
The US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to the vaccine on Friday and same day the US Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted on Saturday to recommend it for people age 16 and older in the US. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield accepted the recommendation on Saturday night as quickest.
The US already has purchased 100 million from Pfizer,200 million from Moderna, 300 million vaccine from AstraZeneca, 100 million from Johnson & Johnson 100 million from Novavax and 100 million from SanofiGSK, according to the Operation war speed. A total of 14 million to 20 million vaccine doses are planned to be distributed by the end of the year, followed by 50 to 80 million doses in January and in February.
The vaccine arrives at a critical moment for the US. Hospitalizations due to Covid-19 hit record highs for the seventh day in a row Saturday, and experts warn that the pandemic could continue to get worse before the larger public receives the vaccination due to the winter and holiday season.
The average number of new daily cases over the last week was 210,764, another pandemic high, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins data. Hospitals in nearly every corner of the country have felt the impact. Data from the Department of Health and Human Services shows more than 85% of hospitals nationwide had more Covid-19 patients last week than they did a month ago and overall, about one in five hospital in patients were confirmed to have Covid-19 last week — nearly double the number from a month earlier.
In the country’s 10 largest cities, the share of hospital patients who had the virus ranged from about 9% in New York to 23% in Chicago. In El Paso, Texas, more than 50% of patients in city hospitals had Covid-19 between November 27 and December 3. That’s nearly double the national average for that period.
