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Moncef Slaoui, head of a federal vaccine development program, says the first vaccines could ship in mid-December.
The head of the US government’s coronavirus vaccination effort has said the first doses of an inoculant will be administered “hopefully” in mid-December.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui made the comments in an interview with CNN on Sunday, just two days after Pfizer and BioNTech applied for emergency use approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their coronavirus vaccine. The companies have said that preliminary trials showed the vaccine appeared to be 95 percent effective, putting it well above the usual FDA threshold for emergency use.
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 percent effective.
“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to immunization sites within 24 hours of approval,” said Slaoui, who spearheads Operation Warp Speed, a federal program that increases production of promising vaccines as they are developed. . .
“So I hope maybe the second day after approval on December 11 or 12,” he said.
The official spoke just a day after the United States passed the grim milestone of 12 million confirmed cases in the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. On Friday, the US set another daily record of more than 198,000 newly confirmed cases, amid an increase across the country as the colder months progressed.
Restrictions reinstated
Health officials have warned that medical systems could be overwhelmed in the coming months and face a bigger crisis than during the first outbreak earlier this year.
COVID-19 patient hospitalizations have doubled in the US after declining in the summer months. More than 83,000 people were hospitalized with the virus as of Saturday. To date, at least 255,000 people have died in the US after contracting COVID-19.
On Friday, the Texas National Guard dispatched 36 people to El Paso to help with overloaded operations at the morgue.
Meanwhile, state officials in the US have increasingly imposed new restrictions on the coronavirus and warned against traveling and gathering for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Despite those warnings, officials said more than a million travelers were screened at US airports on Friday, just the second time that threshold has been exceeded since the pandemic began.
In California, the curfew began on Saturday between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time (06:00 and 13:00 GMT). Meanwhile, New York City closed schools for 1.1 million students earlier this week and Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, has been under stay-at-home orders since Monday.
Delayed presidential transition
Beyond Pfizer and BioNTech, the American company Moderna has also reported 95 percent efficacy in phase three clinical trials of its vaccine. British company AstraZeneca, which is developing a vaccine with the University of Oxford, has said it expects to have preliminary results by the end of December. That vaccine is reported to be particularly promising for the elderly.
The prospect of one or more safe and effective vaccines has increased pressure on President Donald Trump’s administration to officially begin the transition with President-elect Joe Biden.
Biden was projected as the winner of the election more than two weeks ago, but Trump has refused to budge and has blocked agency officials from cooperating with Biden’s team, who have said they are moving forward with the transition without critical information. from government agencies.
Both Slaoui and Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert and member of the coronavirus task force, have emphasized in recent interviews the need for a smooth presidential transition to ensure a speedy launch of the vaccine.
Biden, who will take office on January 20, warned last week: “More people can die if we don’t coordinate.”
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