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A small shopping basket filled with vials labeled “COVID-19 – Coronavirus Vaccine” and medical syringes are placed on a Moderna logo in this illustration taken on November 29, 2020. Photo taken on November 29, 2020. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / Illustration
DETROIT / LOS ANGELES / NEW YORK – US distribution of Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine began Saturday, and more than 3,700 sites will begin receiving and administering injections on Monday, greatly expanding the rollout started last week. by Pfizer Inc.
Amid record coronavirus infections and deaths, Moderna has already moved vaccine supplies from its manufacturing plants to warehouses operated by distributor McKesson Corp.
On Saturday, workers packed vaccines in containers and loaded them onto trucks, US Army General Gustave Perna said during a news conference. The trucks will leave on Sunday and shipments will begin arriving at healthcare providers as early as Monday, he said.
Vaccine doses must travel with security guards, including US Marshals, and will be kept in locked refrigerators. US plans require that groups at risk, such as the elderly in nursing homes and medical workers, receive the injections first.
The Food and Drug Administration approved an emergency use authorization on Friday for the Moderna vaccine, the second COVID-19 vaccine to receive approval. The jab developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE was approved on December 11.
The facility of pharmaceutical service provider Catalent Inc in Bloomington, Indiana, is filling and packaging vials with Moderna vaccine and delivering them to McKesson. The company ships them from its facilities, including those in Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee, which are near the air hubs of United Parcel Service Inc and FedEx Corp.
Pfizer organized its own distribution system. The United States government’s vaccine program, called Operation Warp Speed, is in charge of the logistics for the distribution of Moderna under Perna.
‘MY FAULT’
Perna apologized to US governors for confusion over vaccine availability after the US government reduced the number of doses states would receive in the next week.
States like Oregon and Washington, which are stepping up to vaccinate frontline healthcare workers as quickly as possible, said their allowance had been cut by as much as 40%.
Perna said he made a mistake in estimating the number of doses that regulators would approve for shipment, which was less than the number of doses produced.
He said there are no problems with the Pfizer or Moderna manufacturing processes. A spokeswoman for the US Department of Health and Human Services said 7.9 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would be delivered nationwide this week.
“Please accept my personal apology if this was detrimental in your decision making and in your conversations with the people of your great state,” Perna said, appealing to state governors.
The Moderna delivery system will have some of the same players as Pfizer’s, but it will differ in key ways.
Shipping companies UPS and FedEx are prioritizing vaccines on planes and trucks that carry Christmas gifts and other cargo. Your drivers will handle most of the Moderna last-mile vaccine deliveries. They go directly to vaccination sites, unlike Pfizer, which was sent to large centers and redistributed.
“We added a lot of planes, a lot of temporary workers. (Vaccines) are a very small fraction of the total volume, ”said Wes Wheeler, a UPS executive in charge of vaccine shipments.
Moderna’s vaccine is available in quantities as small as 100 doses and can be stored for 30 days in standard temperature refrigerators, while Pfizer’s inoculations come in boxes of 975 doses, must be shipped and stored at -70 Celsius (-94 F), and can be kept for just five days at standard refrigerator temperature.
Initial doses were administered to health professionals. The Walgreens and CVS pharmacy programs to distribute the Pfizer vaccine to long-term care facilities are expected to begin Monday. On Sunday, an advisory panel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consider which groups should be vaccinated next.
Perna said the United States is on track to have enough doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by the end of the year to inoculate 20 million people, as the government projected, but deliveries of those doses may continue through the first week of January. Health experts predict that vaccinating a significant portion of Americans will take a long time in 2021.
Both vaccines were approximately 95% effective in preventing disease in clinical trials that found no serious safety concerns.
Separately, US officials said Pfizer is preparing to distribute an additional 2 million doses of its vaccine to locations across the country next week, and preparations for the shipment will begin over the weekend.
/ MUF
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