White House Vaccine Chief Says First Americans Could Be Vaccinated Next Month

CNN reports that Moncef Slaoui, the head of the U.S. government's effort to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, said the first Americans to receive a vaccine — if things proceed on schedule — could be as soon as the second week of December. "Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization 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 . . . 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," he announced. Pfizer on Friday submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, and an FDA vaccine advisory committee is supposed to meet Dec. 10. If so authorized, the vaccine could be rolled out on Dec. 11, Slaoui said. He added that if things go as planned, the percentage of the American population to be vaccinated in order for life to resume normalcy is likely to be reached in May. Following Slaoui's statement, leading U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said while he "totally agrees" with Slaoui that there could be herd immunity by May, it would require the bulk of the country to be immunized. It will be the states' responsibility to determine local vaccine distribution.