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WASHINGTON: More than a million Americans have received the first dose of their COVID-19 vaccines, a senior official said on Wednesday (December 23), as the United States hopes to return to normal by next summer.
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 that jurisdictions had registered the first million vaccines with his agency since the largest vaccination campaign in United States history began on December 14th.
Approximately 3 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were launched last week, and the official target for this week was 2 million more doses from Pfizer and 6 million more from Moderna.
The US government and its partners will distribute 4.67 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine next week, bringing the total number of doses scheduled for shipment this year to around 20 million. said US Army General Gustave Perna.
Perna said that some deliveries of the first 20 million doses will last until the first week of January.
Moncef Slaoui, senior adviser to the government’s Operation Warp Speed, said it was “unlikely that the target of injecting 20 million people this month will be achieved,” adding that a delay was beginning to emerge between the distribution of the dosing at the sites and the administration of injections.
“The compromise that we can make is to make the doses of the vaccine available,” Slaoui told a news conference. “The speed with which the vaccines increase, the injections of weapons, is slower than we think.”
But he was still confident that he could vaccinate 100 million people in the first quarter of 2021 and another 100 million in the second quarter.
SUMMER WEDDINGS?
If the launch of COVID-19 vaccines proceeds smoothly, it might be possible to achieve widespread population immunity in the United States by next summer, said scientist Anthony Fauci.
In an interview with WebMD published Wednesday, the infectious disease official suggested that people could host weddings in June or July.
READ: New York City imposes quarantine for UK travelers and releases COVID-19 vaccine to paramedics
Fauci said he believes priority populations, such as nursing home residents, healthcare workers, critical workers, the elderly and people at high risk, should receive their vaccinations by March or early April.
“We could start in April to do what I call ‘open season’ in vaccines, 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 AGREEMENT 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 deal includes options for an additional 400 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
READ: 2021 will be the year of the COVID-19 vaccine, but production and delivery challenges remain
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 make up 20 percent of the state’s population.
They can start getting shots on Monday.
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