NEW DELHI, Nov 23: The first American is expected to receive the Corona vaccine on December 11 or 12. The vaccine chief at the White House confirming this on Sunday said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) department of US had received an application from the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech on Friday seeking its approval for emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The head of the US coronavirus vaccine program – Dr Moncef Slaoui said that “FDA vaccine advisory committee is slated to meet on December 10 and our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunisation sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I would expect maybe on day two after approval, on the 11th or on the 12th of December,”
“Hopefully, the first people will be immunized across the United States, across all states, in all the areas where the State Departments of Health will have told us where to deliver the vaccine,” Slaoui added.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the US has recorded more than 12 million cases and 255000 deaths which is the highest toll registered across the world.
Slaoui further added that “If our vaccine is authorised by the FDA, the vaccine could be rolled out in the market the next day,” he also said based on plans, the amount of the population who need to be vaccinated for life to return to normal is likely to happen in May.
“Most people need to be immunised before we can go back to a normal life,” he said.
Last week, America’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci offered a more conservative timeline. He said “the nation could start getting back to relative normality by April or July of 2021 and that would be possible to achieve by the second or third quarter next year.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that coronavirus cases are rapidly rising across the country. The CDC has urged Americans to avoid travelling on Thanksgiving holiday on November 26 to decrease the spread of coronavirus.
The White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx also said “Americans should limit indoor gatherings to immediate households this Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving typically heralds the busiest week for travel in the US. Last year, an estimated 26 million people passed through the country’s airports in the week surrounding the holiday.
(Vinayak Barot)