[ad_1]
Nurse Renee Langone speaks with US Air Force physician Pei-Chun McGregor before administering the Modern Covid-19 vaccine at West Roxbury VA Medical Center in Boston.
More than a million Americans have received the first dose of their COVID-19 vaccines, a milestone in the largest immunization campaign in US history that occurred even as authorities admitted that the pace of implementation slowed. was delaying.
The news comes as the winter surge in cases spreads across the country, where the virus has claimed more than 320,000 lives and is on track to become the third leading cause of death for the year.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, said jurisdictions had registered the first million vaccines with his agency since the largest vaccination campaign in United States history began on 14 from December.
“As we celebrate this historic milestone, we also recognize the challenging road ahead of us,” said Redfield.
“There is currently a limited supply of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, but the supply will increase in the coming weeks and months.”
About three million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were shipped last week, and the official target for this week was two million more doses of Pfizer and six million more doses of Moderna.
Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to the government’s Operation Warp Speed, said that “the target of injecting 20 million people this month is unlikely to be met,” adding that a delay was beginning to emerge between the distribution of the doses at the sites and the injections in the arms.
Still, he remained confident of being able to inoculate 100 million people in the first quarter of 2021 and another 100 million in the second quarter.
While the goals are ambitious, the Warp Speed program has already met its goal of bringing vaccines from the lab bench to authorization within the year.
Many experts doubted that this unprecedented feat was possible.
It was necessary to run the various test steps in parallel and mass-produce doses even before they were proven safe and effective, if they were successful.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gestures after receiving his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health.
Summer weddings?
If the launch of COVID-19 vaccines progresses smoothly, it might be possible to achieve immunity for the widespread population in the United States by next summer, said chief infectious disease official Anthony Fauci.
In an interview with WebMD published Wednesday, Fauci suggested that people could host weddings in June or July.
He said he believed that priority populations, such as nursing home residents, healthcare workers, critical workers, the elderly, and those at high risk, should receive their vaccinations by March or early April.
“We could start in April to do what I call ‘open season’ for vaccinations, that is, anyone in the general population who wants to get vaccinated will get vaccinated.”
He continued: “By the time we get to mid to late summer, I think we will have, if we do it right, we could have 70 to 85 percent of the population vaccinated.
“When that happens, there will be an umbrella of protection across the country.”
Pfizer deal terminated
Also Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it had purchased an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and that the injections would be delivered in July.
That brings the current supply of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States to 400 million doses, half from Pfizer and half from Moderna, allowing the country to immunize 200 million people with the two-shot regimens.
The United States has bought 400 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, half from Pfizer and half from Moderna, allowing it to immunize 200 million people with the two-shot regimen.
The deal includes options for an additional 400 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The US and other countries are also waiting for more vaccines to be approved, with products from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca potentially next in line.
When it comes to vaccination priority, long-term care residents and healthcare workers are at the front of the line.
On Sunday, a committee of experts said that people 75 and older should be the next vaccinated along with 30 million “essential front-line workers,” including teachers, supermarket clerks and police officers.
But the southern state of Florida, home to large numbers of retirees, decided another path, announcing Wednesday that people 65 and older would go before essential workers.
“A lot of them are very young,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said of the workers.
“We go where the risk is greatest and where we believe the impact will be most important,” he said of those over 65, who represent 20 percent of the state’s population.
They can start getting shots on Monday.
Follow the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19)
© 2020 AFP
Citation: One million vaccinated, but US officials admit launch delayed (December 24, 2020), accessed December 24, 2020 at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12- million-vaccinated-rollout.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for private study or research purposes, no part may be reproduced without written permission. The content is provided for informational purposes only.
[ad_2]
