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All 50 US states at 145 sites across the country will receive the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. However, Bill Gates warns that the risk of coronavirus could extend through early 2022 and more news.
Across the United States, medical workers are preparing to give the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Supplies were expected to arrive at administration sites starting around 8 a.m. ET on Monday, December 14.
“We expect 145 sites across all the states to receive vaccine on Monday, another 425 sites on Tuesday, and the final 66 sites on Wednesday, which will complete the initial delivery of the Pfizer orders for vaccine,” Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, said on Saturday as reported by CNN.
There is no federal mandate determining who gets vaccinated initially, leaving it up to the states to allocate who receives the vaccine first. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that frontline healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities be vaccinated first.
The first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine went to healthcare workers who have spent the last ten months working on the front lines in the pandemic.
The first person to receive the vaccine on Monday morning in New York, and possibly in the US, was identified as Sandra Lindsay, RN, a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Fox reported. She received the vaccine during a press conference held by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
December 14 is the day for the all 538 electors of the Electoral College to officially vote to confirm President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election after recently being certified in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., NBC reports.
Biden’s transition team, in a statement, said that the President-elect will speak following the final votes by the Electoral College, about 8 p.m. ET. Biden is expected to make remarks on “the strength and resilience of our democracy.”
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has also been active in healthcare issues and disease prevention around the globe through the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, said during an interview on Sunday that while the COVID-19 vaccines will be helpful, it will take some time to eradicate coronavirus.
Gates said preventative measures will need to continue for quite a while, in addition to vaccinations, saying that over the next four to six months we really need “to do our best, because we can see that this will end and you don’t want somebody that you love to be the last to die from coronavirus.”
Gates says expects that coronavirus could linger through the early part of the year 2022, Fox reported.
“But even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease, and we get high vaccination rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there,” Gates said. “And, of course, the global economy will be slowed down, which hurts America economically in a pretty dramatic way.”
