WASHINGTON – The United States has approved the emergency use of a coronavirus vaccine and it will begin arriving in the country early tomorrow (Monday).
The Chief Operating Officer of the Vaccine Development Program, General Gustave Perna said at a news conference in Washington that shipping companies would begin delivering about 3 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine to nearly 150 distribution centers from tomorrow.
He said an additional 450 facilities will also get the vaccine by Wednesday.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus jab to show promising results in the latter stages of its testing process.
It is a new type called an mRNA vaccine that uses a tiny fragment of genetic code from the pandemic virus to teach the body how to fight Covid-19 and build immunity.
“The vaccine contains a small piece of the [Covid-19] virus’s mRNA that instructs cells in the body to make the virus’s distinctive ‘spike’ protein,” the FDA said.
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With 295,786 deaths and over 15.9 million confirmed cases, the United States tops the list of twenty countries with the highest recorded infections and deaths in the world.
Globally, more than 70.52 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus and 1,598,967 have died, according to a Reuters tally published on Sunday.
Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
