Global death toll from COVID nears 1.6 million – Manila Bulletin

United States Prepared for a Massive Vaccination Campaign

WASHINGTON, United States – The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in hospitals and other sites in the United States Monday morning, a senior official said Saturday, ready to be injected into the arms of millions of more Americans. vulnerable of the world. the death toll approached 1.6 million.

The imminent start of the mass vaccination campaign in the worst affected country in the world came as Italy overtook Great Britain as the European nation with the highest number of coronavirus deaths.

“I am worried about the two weeks of Christmas holidays. We are facing a dramatic pandemic that is ongoing; the battle has not yet been won, ”said Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza at a symposium, as the country recorded 64,036 deaths, surpassing Britain’s 64,026.

Regional affairs minister Francesco Boccia told Italian television that unless people take a careful approach, “the risk of a third wave is almost certain.”

As the world was expected to shortly cross the grim threshold of 1.6 million deaths, infections in the United States soared, with 1.1 million new cases confirmed in the past five days and a death toll. close to 300,000.

Doses of the Pfizer vaccine will begin leaving the company’s factory at the Kalama, Michigan Zoo on Sunday, stored in boxes containing dry ice that are capable of being kept at -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit), the freezing temperature necessary to preserve the drug. .

General Gus Perna, who oversees the massive logistics operation as part of the government’s Operation Warp Speed, compared the moment to D-Day, the turning point of World War II.

“I am absolutely 100 percent confident that we are going to safely distribute this precious commodity, this vaccine, necessary to defeat the enemy Covid,” he told reporters.

Over the past two weeks, the US has repeatedly surpassed 2,000 Covid-related deaths a day, rivaling the tolls it saw in the early days of the pandemic.

Perna said hundreds of sites, including hospitals and other distribution centers, would receive the vaccines Monday through Wednesday, covering the first wave of about three million people to be vaccinated.

Federal health authorities have recommended that healthcare workers and nursing home residents be at the front of the line, but the final decisions have been left to the states.

The United States seeks to vaccinate 20 million people this month alone.