(Reuters) – An advisory panel on Sunday advised U.S. front-line workers and people 75 and older should be next in line to get vaccinated as the distribution of Moderna Inc.’s vaccine, the second approved coronavirus vaccine, across the country country began.
The Immunization Advisory Committee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted 13 to 1 to recommend 30 million essential frontline workers, including first responders, educators, food and agriculture, manufacturing, U.S. Postal Service, public transportation, and grocery store employees , have the next priority for the vaccines.
The move would make a total of 51 million people eligible for inoculation in the next round. It was not immediately clear when the next round would start.
About 200 million people, including non-frontline workers, such as those in the media, financial, energy and IT and communications industries, those aged 65-74, and those aged 16-64 in high-risk conditions , in the next round, the panel would be recommended.
States, handing out shots to their residents, will use the guidelines of the advisory panel to decide how to allocate vaccines while supplies are scarce.
Vaccination against the disease is key to safely reopening large parts of the economy and reducing the risks of disease in overcrowded meat packaging plants, factories and warehouses. However, confusion has arisen as to who exactly is considered essential during a pandemic.
Prior to the vote, many companies and industry groups had lobbied to get their U.S. employees in line to receive the vaccines immediately after health care professionals and residents of long-term care facilities.
Meanwhile, trucks from FedEx Corp and United Parcel Service Inc began to collect doses from warehouses for deliveries to hospitals and other locations.
Vials of Moderna’s vaccine were filled at the pharmaceutical service provider Catalent Inc’s facility in Bloomington, Indiana. Distributor McKesson Corp ships doses from facilities in Louisville, Kentucky and Memphis, Tennessee, among others – close to air hubs for UPS and FedEx.
Both FedEx and UPS said shipments went smoothly and everything went exactly as planned.
Separately, US health officials are following the new strain of COVID-19 emerging in the UK, US surgeon general Jerome Adams said Sunday, adding that each mutation demonstrates people must continue to protect themselves from the new coronavirus pending vaccination.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and scientists announced Saturday that the new virus strain has led to soaring infection rates, tightened COVID-19 restrictions for London and nearby areas and disrupted the Christmas vacation plans of millions of people.
The variant, which officials say is up to 70% more transferable than the original, has raised concerns about wider distribution. Several European countries, including Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, said they were taking measures to prevent people from arriving from Britain, including a ban on flights and trains.
The distribution of Moderna’s vaccine to more than 3,700 locations in the United States will significantly increase the roll-out started last week by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE.
Moncef Slaoui, head of the US COVID-19 vaccine program, said it was likely Moderna’s first vaccination to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday morning.
“We look forward to the vaccine. It will be a little easier to distribute because it won’t require as low (a) a temperature as Pfizer, ”Slaoui said on CNN.
The US government plans to deliver 5.9 million Moderna shots and 2 million Pfizer shots this week.
Data from CDC shows that 2.84 million doses have been distributed and 556,208 shots have been administered to date.
The start of the Moderna vaccine supply will significantly increase the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, as the number of deaths in the US from the respiratory disease has reached more than 316,000 in the 11 months since the first US cases documented. (Image: tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)
Some states choose to use Moderna’s shots for hard-to-reach rural areas, as they can be stored in standard-temperature refrigerators for 30 days. Pfizer’s must be shipped and stored at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit) and can only be stored for five days at standard refrigerator temperatures.
The first doses were given to health professionals. Pharmacy programs Walgreens and CVS to distribute the Pfizer vaccine to long-term care facilities are expected to start on Monday.
Reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall