Dr. Moncef Slaoui, head of the government’s coronavirus vaccine program, projected that as many as 100 million people could be vaccinated by the end of February, constituting a large portion of the vulnerable population.
“Between mid-December and the end of February, we will have potentially 100 million [people immunized], which is really more or less the size of the significant at-risk population: the elderly, the healthcare workers,” Slaoui told reporters Wednesday.
The leading vaccine candidates that have been put forward for emergency use authorization come from Pfizer and Moderna and must be administered in two shots about three weeks apart. The government vaccine development initiative Operation Warp Speed plans to distribute 40 million vaccine doses, enough for 20 million people, by the end of December. Slaoui said that in January, there will be enough vaccines to immunize 30 million more people, followed by another 50 million people immunized by the end of February.
The first and second doses will be shipped out to states in two different phases so as not to overwhelm each state’s specialized vaccine storage capacity, the officials added. Half of all allocated doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine will be sent to states, followed by the second dose after the requisite 21 or 28 days, depending on which vaccine is authorized.
“Our goal is to distribute within 24 hours after the [emergency use authorization],” Gen. Gus Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, told reporters. “Then, we want to maintain a deliberate, planned, coordinated cadence of delivery of vaccine as it becomes available.”
For Slaoui’s prediction to come true, states will initially have to distribute their stock of vaccines among the most vulnerable populations. Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the panel within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responsible for guiding the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, voted Tuesday to include both healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities such as nursing homes in that first group that will receive inoculations. However, states are not obliged to adhere to the CDC guidance.
“The states know their people, their populations, the best. … Then you have leaders, taking responsibility and directing a priority of vaccines into administration,” Perna said. “Our responsibility is to enable their plan, to empower their plan.”
