US vaccine campaign launches with first shipments delivering hope
The coronavirus vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, gained emergency-use approval from federal regulators late on Friday…
CARGO planes and trucks with the first US shipments of coronavirus vaccine fanned out from FedEx and UPS hubs in Tennessee and Kentucky on Sunday en route to distribution points around the country, launching an immunization project of unprecedented scope and complexity.
The inoculations, seen as pivotal to ultimately halting a surging pandemic that is claiming more than 2,400 US lives a day, could begin as early as Monday.
The first are likely to be at vaccination sites closest to any of the 145 initial shipment destinations nationwide, or those nearest the FedEx Corp or United Parcel Service cargo centers that are relaying deliveries from the factory.
Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky suggested the very first injections of the vaccine will be given in his state, home to the UPS Worldport sorting facility in Louisville - one of two distribution command centers. The other is the FedEx air cargo hub in Memphis, Tennessee.
‘We now believe that the first individuals will be vaccinated here in the commonwealth tomorrow morning. We are less than 24 hours away from the beginning of the end of this virus,’ Beshear wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
The coronavirus vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, gained emergency-use approval from federal regulators late on Friday, clearing the way for distribution to begin a mere 11 months after the US documented its first Covid-19 infections.
The monumental undertaking began early on Sunday with trucks carrying dry ice-cooled packages of vaccine - which must be kept at sub-Arctic temperatures - from Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids.
From there, the delivery jets whisked the shipments to UPS and FedEx’s respective cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, for distribution on planes and trucks to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the