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The country hardest hit by the pandemic is preparing for a mass vaccination campaign, with COVID-19 killing more than 1.6 million people worldwide and Italy killing the UK as the number of deaths in Europe.
“I am worried about the two weeks of Christmas. We are fighting a dramatic pandemic … and this fight has not yet been won,” Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said at a symposium.
64,036 deaths of COVID-19 patients have already been reported in Italy. In the UK, the figure is 64,026.
In the United States, the number of infections is growing rapidly: 1.1 million cases have been confirmed in the last five days. new cases of COVID-19, and the total number of deaths is approaching 300,000. ribos.
Vaccine dose shipments from Pfizer and BioNTech will begin shipping from Pfizer’s Kalamazoo, Michigan plant on Sunday. They must be stored at a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius and therefore transported in boxes with dry ice.
General Gus Perna, who oversees this massive logistics operation, told reporters: “I am 100 percent confident that we will safely distribute this precious product, this vaccine, which is needed to defeat the enemy COVID.”
Over the past two weeks, more than 2,000 people have died each day in the United States. COVID-19 patients. Previously, these numbers were recorded only at the beginning of a pandemic.
As Perna noted, hundreds of facilities, including hospitals, will receive doses of the vaccine from Monday to Wednesday. In the first phase of vaccination, about 3 million people must be vaccinated. people. Federal health officials recommend vaccinating medical personnel and nursing home residents first, but states will make the final decisions.
The United States aims to vaccinate 20 million more this month. people.
Permits issued
The United States became the sixth country in the world on Friday night to authorize a vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus infection, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. In the past, these permits have been issued by Great Britain, Bahrain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico.
It is a moment of triumph for the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner, the German company BioNTech, which launched the product only 11 months ago using new ribonucleic acid (mRNA) information technology.
The vaccine’s efficacy, as found in clinical trials, is 95 percent, and there have been no serious concerns about its safety.
However, after two vaccinated medical staff in the UK developed a severe allergic reaction, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advised people who had a history of allergic reactions to the components. of the vaccine who are not vaccinated.
Most researchers acknowledge that the data collected is not yet complete, but agree that the rapid spread of a pandemic requires a shift in focus on risk-benefit balance.
The FDA committee will meet next week to discuss the second vaccine, developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health.
The development of two other candidate vaccines ran into obstacles on Friday: France’s Sanofi and Britain’s GSK announced that their vaccines would not be available until the end of 2021.
Australia has meanwhile decided to suspend production of a new coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Queensland and biotech company CSL, as the first phase of testing found that antibodies in vaccinated organisms led to erroneous results. in some HIV tests.
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