U.S. vaccination drive heads to nursing homes

The U.S. government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains kicked off a nationwide campaign to vaccinate nursing home residents against COVID-19 on Monday, a week after the first vaccines authorized in the country began being administered to healthcare workers.

The program is the latest effort to control a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people in the country and is straining the capacity of healthcare systems in some states.

The United States has two authorized vaccines against the virus, one developed by Pfizer

Inc and German partner BioNTech SE, which was cleared for use on Dec. 11, and one by Moderna Inc that was approved on Friday.

Some 2.9 million shots of the Pfizer vaccine were distributed last week and mostly given to healthcare workers. The first Moderna injections are expected to begin being administered on Monday. About 7.9 million doses of the two shots are being distributed nationwide this week.

The U.S. government is urging states to prioritize those at greatest risk from the virus because vaccine supplies remain limited. A top U.S. official said on Saturday that the government may not meet its original goal of inoculating 20 million Americans by the end of the year, with some of those planned doses dragging into January.

Many states have put healthcare workers and nursing home residents first in line for vaccinations, in keeping with recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Older people in nursing homes have accounted for a disproportionate number of deaths in the pandemic.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and CVS Health Corp are leading a program, in partnership with the federal government, that aims to vaccinate some seven million people in more than 70,000 long term care facilities.