OLIVE BRANCH, Miss. (AP) – Workers on Sunday began packaging shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine approved in the US, a much-needed boost to efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Workers at a facility in the Memphis area were boxing the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health. The much needed shots are expected to be given from Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration approved their emergency rollout.
Later Sunday, an expert committee will debate who should be next for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and a similar vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and the German BioNTech. Pfizer’s shots were sent first a week ago and started to be used the next day, the start of the largest vaccination round in the country.
Public health experts say the shots – and others in the pipeline – are the only way to stop a virus from spreading wildly. Across the country, an average of more than 219,000 people a day test positive for the virus, which has killed more than 314,000 people in the US and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.
The shots from Pfizer and Moderna sent so far and going out in the coming weeks, almost all go to health workers and residents of long-term care homes, based on the advice of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
That panel will meet on Sunday to discuss who should receive the available doses after those early injections are given.
There won’t be enough shots for the general population until spring, so doses will be rationed for at least the next few months.
The panelists tend to line up “essential workers” because people such as bus drivers, shop assistants and others are the most frequently infected. But other experts say people 65 and older should be next, along with people with certain medical conditions, because that’s the Americans who die at the highest rates.
The expert panel’s advice is almost always endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Whatever the CDC says, there will be differences from state to state as their health departments have different ideas about who should be closer to the front line.
Both the new Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech injection require two doses several weeks apart. The second dose must be from the same company as the first. Both vaccines have been shown to be safe and highly protective in large, pending studies.