US to begin COVID-19 vaccinations in early December

4 min readNov 22, 2020

The United States hopes to begin a sweeping program of COVID-19 vaccinations in early December, the head of the government’s coronavirus vaccine effort said Sunday as cases surge across the worst-hit nation.

The beginning of vaccinations could be a crucial turning point in the battle against the virus that has claimed more than 255,000 lives in the US, the world’s highest reported toll, since emerging from China late last year.

“Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours of approval” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Moncef Slaoui told CNN, pointing to possible dates of Dec. 11 or Dec. 12.

FDA vaccine advisors reportedly will meet on Dec. 10 to discuss approving vaccines that pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and Moderna say are at least 95% effective.

Worldwide, nearly 1.4 million people have died this year and at least 58 million cases have been registered.

Slaoui estimated that 20 million people across the US could be vaccinated in December, with 30 million per month after that.

‘Herd immunity’ by May?

He said that by May, with potentially 70% of the population having been vaccinated, the country could attain “herd immunity,” meaning the virus can no longer spread widely and that people can move closer to resuming their pre-coronavirus way of life.

Slaoui added a note of caution, saying, “I really hope and look forward to seeing that the level of negative perception of the vaccine decreases and people’s acceptance increase.

“That is going to be critical to help us.”

A recent Gallup poll showed that four in 10 Americans still say they would not get a COVID-19 vaccine, though that is down slightly from five in 10 surveyed in September.

Slaoui said he thought it would help in persuading vaccine skeptics to learn that trials have shown the new vaccines to be 95% effective, well above the 50% level that was earlier targeted for vaccine approval.

Officials have yet to announce which groups in the population would receive the vaccine first, though health care workers are certain to receive priority, followed by vulnerable groups like the elderly.

Slaoui said that while the trials had ensured only short-term safety, decades of experience showed that nearly all adverse effects of vaccines occurred within 40 days of being administered, while the current trials protectively covered 60 days.

With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Slaoui added, there were no serious adverse effects in that period.

For now, the vaccines have not been tested on young children, but the doctor said trials are underway, with a chance toddlers could be vaccinated starting in the second quarter of 2021, with infants coming afterward.

Countries worldwide, as well as international organizations, were working out plans for global distribution of these vaccines and potentially others still being developed.

The G20 countries, in a virtual meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia, plan to pledge to “spare no effort” in ensuring fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide, according to a draft communique seen by Agence France-Presse on Sunday. The communique offered no details, however, on how the effort would be funded.

NEW DELHI, Nov 22 (Reuters) — India’s health minister said on Sunday a locally-developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate could complete its final trials in a month or two, raising hopes for a rapid roll-out in a country with the world’s second highest number of infections.

The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and privately-held Bharat Biotech this month started third-stage trials of COVAXIN, in a process that would involve 26,000 volunteers. It is the most advanced Indian experimental vaccine.

“We are in the process of developing our indigenous vaccines, in the process of completing our third-phase trials in the next one or two months,” Harsh Vardhan told a web conference on the pandemic.

He reiterated the government’s plan was to immunise 200 million to 250 million Indians by July.

An ICMR scientist told Reuters earlier this month the vaccine could be launched in February or March, although Bharat Biotech separately told Reuters on Friday that results of the late-stage trials were expected only between March and April.

Vardhan, however, said in September the government could opt for emergency vaccine authorisation, particularly for the elderly and people in high-risk workplaces.

Indian officials have said they expect to rely on COVAXIN and four other locally-tested candidates to control COVID-19, as they do not expect early access to sufficient quantities of those developed by Pfizer and Moderna.

The other experimental vaccines on trial in India are the one being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University that is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India; Russia’s Sputnik-V; Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D and lastly one that Biological E. Ltd is developing with Baylor College of Medicine and Dynavax Technologies Corp.

Serum’s CEO said on Friday the AstraZeneca vaccine could be delivered to Indian healthcare workers and the elderly by January.

India on Sunday recorded 45,209 new infections, taking the total to 9.09 million, only behind that of the United States. Deaths rose by 501 to 133,227, with Delhi recording the highest number of daily fatalities in the country over the last few days. (Reporting by Krishna N. Das and Neha Arora; editing by Barbara Lewis

US to begin COVID-19 vaccinations in early December

Written by Sunday Football