When will residents receive the vaccine?
Lamont expects first doses to be available in mid-December
With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration potentially just days away from authorizing the first COVID-19 vaccine, some Connecticut residents could receive the first doses of a vaccine by mid-December.
Once a vaccine is authorized by the federal government, doses will be shipped to the states, which are in charge of actually distributing the vaccine to residents.
For the most part, states will make their own decisions about which groups of residents to vaccinate first, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is issuing recommendations on the vaccination order.
That means that some
Connecticut residents could be vaccinated within weeks, although most people will have to wait another six or seven months.
Whenwillthe FDAauthorize the first vaccine?
The United Kingdom on Wednesday announced that it had approved for use a vaccine created by Pfizer-BioNTech, which is also a front-runner in the U.S.
But in the U.S., the vaccine hasn’t been authorized yet.
Independent advisers to the FDAwill meet to discuss the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Dec. 10 and the Moderna vaccine on Dec. 17.
At those meetings, which will be public, the advisers will debate the vaccines and ultimately issue a recommendation on whether they should be authorized for use, according to The Associated Press.
In the days after each meeting, the FDA will then make a
decision, based in part on those recommendations, and either issue or deny an emergency use authorization.
With this timeline, the Pfizer vaccine could receive authoriza
tion by early to mid-December and the Moderna vaccine by midto late December.
Notably, an emergency use