The first shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine approved in the US left a distribution center on Sunday, a much-needed boost as the nation works to get the coronavirus pandemic under control.
The trucks left the Olive Branch, Mississippi plant near Memphis, Tennessee, with the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. MRNA,
and the National Institutes of Health. The much-needed shots are expected to be released on Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration clears their emergency rollout.
In Louisville, Kentucky, UPS driver Todd Elble said his vaccine shipment was the “most important load I have shipped” in a 37-year career. His parents locked up COVID-19 in November, and his 78-year-old father died. He said the family speculates that his father became infected while on a hunting trip with four other family members to Wyoming, and some are still sick.
‘I’m going to take the vaccine myself. I’m going to be first in line for my dad – I’ll tell you that a lot – and everyone else who should follow, ”he said. “I feel in my heart that everyone should help stop this.”
He added, “To bring this back, I feel like Dad was in the truck with me today.”
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser to the federal government’s vaccine distribution, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that nearly 8 million doses will be distributed Monday, about 5.9 million of the Moderna vaccine and 2 million of the vaccine. Pfizer Inc. PFE,
He said the first Moderna shots should be given Monday morning.
Also on Sunday, a committee of experts began to consider who would be next for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and that of Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech BNTX,
Pfizer’s shots were first shipped a week ago and used the next day, kicking off the country’s largest vaccination campaign.
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, more than 219,000 people a day test positive on average for the virus, which has killed more than 316,000 people in the US and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.
Slaoui also predicted that the US will experience “an ongoing wave,” with higher numbers of coronavirus cases possibly due to gatherings before Christmas.
“I think it will unfortunately get worse,” he said.
The shots from Pfizer and Moderna sent so far and over the next few weeks will almost all go to health workers and residents of long-term care homes, based on the advice of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
There won’t be enough shots for the general population until spring, so doses will be rationed for at least the next few months. President-elect Joe Biden pledged earlier this month to distribute 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office, and his surgeon-nominee Sunday said it is still a realistic goal.
But Vivek Murthy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it is more realistic to think it may be midsummer or early fall before coronavirus vaccines are available to the general population, rather than late spring. Murthy said Biden’s team is working to have the recordings available to those at lower risk by the end of spring, but that requires “everything to be right on schedule.”
“I think it is more realistic to assume that it could be the middle of summer or early fall when this vaccine makes its way into the general population,” said Murthy. “So we want to be optimistic, but we also want to be careful.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s surgeon general, Jerome Adams, defended the way the government handled the Pfizer vaccine Sunday, a day after the military’s blanket charge of obtaining COVID-19 vaccines in the US apologized Saturday for “ miscommunication. ‘with states on the number of doses to be used. delivered in the early stages of distribution. At least a dozen states reported that they would receive a smaller second shipment of the Pfizer vaccine than previously told.
General Gustave Perna told reporters in a telephone briefing that he had made mistakes in listing the number of doses he thought would be ready. Slaoui said the error was that the vaccines produced were ready for shipment when there was a two-day delay.
“And unless it is perfectly correct, we will not release vaccine doses for use,” he said. And sometimes there can be little hiccups. There are actually none in production right now. The hiccups were more in the planning. “
But Adams said on CBS “Face the Nation” that “the numbers will go up and down.”
“It was definitely not bad planning,” he said. That is what we intend to do. That’s what we actually assign. There is what is delivered, and then there is what is actually put into people’s arms. “
Adams, who is black, said he understands that distrust of the medical community and the vaccine among blacks “comes from a real place,” the mistreatment of communities of color. He cited the decades-long Tuskegee experiment in Alabama, where black men with syphilis were not treated so that the disease could be studied.
He also said that immigrants in the US should not be illegally refused the vaccine because of their legal status, because “it is not ethically correct to refuse those individuals.”
“I want to reassure people that when it is collected for your second injection, if you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, it will not be used in any way to cause you legal harm,” Adams said. “I am assured of that.”
The expert panelists tend to put “essential workers” next in line, as people such as bus drivers, shop assistants and others are the most likely to become 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 different health departments have different ideas about who should be closer to the front line.
Both the 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.