Some in U.S. could get shots before Christmas
WA SHINGTON • After a Thanksgiving weekend when the number of people travelling through U. S. airports reached its highest since mid-March, a top government official said on Monday some Americans could begin receiving coronavirus vaccinations before Christmas.
U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine could be authorized and shipped within days of a Dec. 10 meeting of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration tasked with reviewing trial data and recommending whether it warrants approval.
A vaccine from Moderna could follow a week later, he said, after the company announced on Monday it would apply for U. S. and European emergency authorization. Final trial data showed the vaccine to be 94.1 per cent effective at preventing COVID-19, comparable with Pfizer’s results.
“So we could be seeing both of these vaccines out and getting into people’s arms before Christmas,” Azar said on CBS’ This Morning.
The federal government will ship the vaccines. State governors will decide how they are distributed within their states.
The United States has reported 4.2 million new COVID-19 cases so far in November and more than 36,000 coronavirus- related deaths, according to a Reuters tally. Hospitalizations are at a pandemic high and deaths the most in six months.
As the virus rages across the country, overwhelming hospital systems and pushing already exhausted medical staff near a breaking point, U. S. officials pleaded with Americans to avoid holiday travel and limit social gatherings.
Many appear to have disregarded those pleas over the long Thanksgiving weekend as the Transportation Security Administration screened 1.18 million airline passengers on Sunday, the highest since mid-march.
“There almost certainly is going to be an uptick (of infections) because of what has happened with the travel,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious diseases experts, told ABC’S This Week ”program on Sunday.
More than 93,000 Americans are currently sick enough with COVID-19 to require hospitalization. Experts worry that number will keep rising as the weather gets colder and people gather indoors more often. Increases in hospitalizations tend to lag spikes in new cases by a few weeks.
“Hospital capacity is the top concern,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Monday. He ordered all elective surgeries to cease in one county and urged hospitals statewide to again ready their plans to increase capacity by 50 per cent if necessary or set up and staff field hospitals.
With the latest wave of the virus spiking across the country and no federal blueprint to combat it, 25 states have issued new or revamped restrictions on businesses, schools and social life in an attempt to curb the spread.