The United States expects to start a comprehensive Covid vaccination program in early December, the head of the government’s coronavirus vaccination effort said Sunday.
“Our plan is to be able to send the vaccines to immunization sites within 24 hours of approval” by the US Food and Drug Administration, Moncef Slaoui told CNN.
“So I hope maybe the second day of approval, December 11 or 12.”
The FDA’s vaccine advisers are reportedly meeting Dec. 8-10 to discuss approval of vaccines that Pfizer and Moderna say are at least 95% effective.
Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc applied to U.S. health regulators on Friday for emergency use authorization (EUA) of its COVID-19 vaccine, the first application of its kind in an important step to provide protection against the new coronavirus.
The application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) comes just days after Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE reported final trial results showing the vaccine was 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 without major safety concerns.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla confirmed that the request had been made in a video posted on the company’s website Friday afternoon.
The FDA said Friday that it would hold an advisory committee meeting on Dec. 10 in which members would discuss the vaccine.
The United States, which recorded 177,552 new infections on Saturday, now averages nearly 110,000 more cases a day than a month ago. Recently, the US FDA approved a cocktail of antibodies from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the treatment of coronavirus.
With contributions from the agency
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