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The outgoing president of the United States, Donald Trump, has announced that Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine has begun to be distributed nationwide and that the first dose will be administered within 24 hours.
“Through our alliance with Fedex and UPS, we have already started shipping the vaccine to all states and zip codes in the country; the first vaccine will be administered in less than 24 hours, “said the Republican, in a speech in the Oval Office. The announcement came minutes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that regulates the marketing of drugs, authorized the emergency use of the vaccine by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German BioNTech.
The authorization, which refers to an exceptional pre-approval procedure, was announced by the FDA hours after the White House pressured agency director Stephen Hahn to approve the vaccine late Friday, under penalty of being forced to resign.
In his speech, Trump also explained that governors “will decide where vaccines go in their states and who receives them first.” “We want our senior, healthcare, and emergency professionals to come first. This will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalizations.”he added.
The vaccines are being distributed throughout the country as part of the first batch of 2.9 million doses that those responsible for the distribution operation said could be shipped within 24 hours of authorization. Pfizer also promised 25 million doses by the end of the year (each vaccine requires two doses) and, by March, the 100 million doses purchased by the Trump administration for $ 1.95 billion.
The authorization of the Pfizer vaccine comes at a time when the United States is registering successive records of cases and deaths from the new coronavirus, with more than 200,000 new infections daily in recent days. The United States is the country with the highest number of deaths (294,690) and also confirmed infections (more than 15.8 million).
Trump, defeated in the November 3 presidential election by the Democratic candidate and now president-elect, Joe Biden, made the swift approval of a covid-19 vaccine one of the flags of the election campaign, successively ensuring that a effective medicine before the elections. end of the year and that the United States would be the first country to receive the vaccine.
However, this did not happen, as the United Kingdom was the first country to start the vaccination campaign for the same vaccine approved on Friday in the United States.
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