The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pfizer preps first 6.4M vaccine doses to go out
Emergency federal authorization for use looks likely as soon as mid- December.
WASHINGTON — The federal government plans to send 6.4 million doses of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to communities across the United States within 24 hours of regulatory clearance, with the expectation that shots will be administered quickly to front- line health care workers, the top priority group, officials said Tuesday.
Gen. Gustave Perna, who oversees logistics for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to speed up treatments and vaccines, told reporters that state officials were informed Friday night of the allocation, which is based on each state’s overall population.
The amount would cover just a portion of the nation’s 20 million health care workers, let alone the U. S. population of 330 million. But Perna said “a steady drumbeat” of additional doses will be delivered as manufacturing capacity ramps up in each successive week.
With increased prospects that federal regulators will authorize the Pfizer vaccine on an emergency basis as early as mid- December, and the fifirst shots administered before the end of the year, Operation Warp Speed has begun to release more details about the massive and complicated distribution effort to immunize tens of millions of Americans.
U. S. government officials are on track to have 40 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer and a second company, biotech firm Moderna, by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 20 million people. ( Each vaccine requires two doses). It is likely to be April before the general public begins to get vaccinated.
The initial 6.4 million doses also includes vaccines that would go to five federal agencies — the Bureau of Prisons, the Defense and State departments, Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Administration — that receive allocations directly from the federal government.
States and territories now have the necessary information to “plan and figure out where they want the vaccine distributed” in the first shipment, Perna said. States are supposed to designate their top five sites capable of receiving and administering the Pfizer vaccine,
which must be stored at ultracold temperatures of minus- 94 Fahrenheit and has exacting handling protocols. The ultracold temperature is signifificantly below the standard for most vaccines of 36- 46 degrees F.
Many states have designated large hospital systems to be the fifirst places to receive vaccines because they have ultracold freezers and can efficiently vaccinate many people. The minimum order for the Pfizer vaccine is 975 doses; for Moderna’s, with a storage temperature that does not require such freezers, the minimum order is 100.
Once a vaccine is cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, an independent advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — will hold a public meeting within 48 hours to vote on fifinal recommendations for the vaccine’s use and who should get the fifirst shots. Health- care workers will be the fifirst priority, the group has said. About 3 million residents of longterm care facilities are also likely to be included in that fifirst phase.